From Fragmented to Whole: Tools to Tangibly Reparent Your Younger Parts

Summary

Podcast Summary: You Make Sense with Sarah Baldwin

Episode: From Fragmented to Whole: Tools to Tangibly Reparent Your Younger Parts
Date: September 30, 2025
Host: Sarah Baldwin, SEP

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Overview

In this episode, Sarah Baldwin offers a comprehensive, tangible roadmap for reparenting fragmented parts of ourselves—those younger, wounded inner selves that drive our emotions and behaviors. Drawing from neuroscience, somatic experiencing, and parts work (IFS), Sarah explains how trauma fragments us and how reparenting is essential for healing, self-liberation, and living a fuller life. The episode moves from theoretical grounding to rich, practical tools, ending with a candid Q&A that explores practical concerns of listeners.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Foundation: Understanding "Parts"

[01:00 – 12:30]

• What Are Parts & How Do They Form?

  • We start life as one whole being, but trauma—ranging from overwhelming events to chronic unmet needs—causes parts of ourselves to “fragment off.”
  • These aren’t separate personalities, but rather, versions of ourselves—each stuck in the time of their wounding.
  • Quote: “Your soul, your body, your life force wants to come back into wholeness. It knows how to do that… and is just waiting for the conditions necessary to make that happen.” (Sarah, 04:28)

• Parts and the Nervous System

  • The neuroceptive systems (brainstem threat detector and interoception) search internal and external cues, reactivating old parts when there’s a “flavoring” of past threats.
  • Example: Moving to a new city triggers the same feelings as a bullied sixth grader.

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2. Types of Parts: Vulnerable, Protectors, and Self

[12:30 – 18:35]

• Vulnerable Parts:
  • Hold the original wounds—pain, shame, fear of not belonging.
• Protectors:
  • Develop to keep the vulnerable parts from being hurt again; may show up as hypervigilance, perfectionism, avoidance, or people-pleasing.
  • Quote: “Their job is to ensure that the bad thing doesn’t happen again… always trying to ensure the vulnerable part never has to feel that pain again.” (Sarah, 14:55)
• Self (“Adult You”):
  • The grounded, present-moment adult capable of choosing and attuning wisely; our truest core.
  • Quote: “When we are in our truest self, our adult self, we feel anchored, present, here, able… That’s what we’re all wanting to experience.” (Sarah, 17:01)
  • Sarah uses lions in nature (or any calm animal) as an embodiment model for “Self energy.”

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3. Why Reparent? From Beautiful Prisons to Freedom

[19:45 – 23:15]

• The Cost of Unreparented Parts:
  • Unmet parts and overactive protectors can result in “beautiful prisons”—a seemingly regulated but actually limited, inhibited life.
  • Common signs: Inability to connect to purpose, chronic dysregulation, insomnia, chronic illness, or a “stuck” feeling.
  • Often, the things we desire most are exactly what was dangerous or forbidden in our past.
• The Path Forward:
  • True healing is allowing parts to rest, ending suffering, so you can be free: “We don’t reparent our parts for the sake of doing it. We reparent so we can end their suffering, which ends our suffering. That allows you to be free.” (Sarah, 23:23)

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4. Holistic Model—You Make Sense Program

[25:05 – 28:14]

• Sarah shares how her integrated program combines parts work (IFS), somatic experiencing, boundaries, and attachment theory—identifying the importance of working holistically rather than in fragmented modalities.
• Quote: “What I realized was how much each of these modalities need each other like a web… so you don’t have to go to multiple clinicians.” (Sarah, 27:19)

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5. The Practical Process: Tangible Steps for Reparenting

[28:15 – 47:30]

Step 1: Build Capacity to Anchor in Adult Self (Self-Energy) [28:24]

• Regulation First: Must be regulated to not “freak out” at our parts’ overwhelm.
• If you try reparenting from a protector part, it’s like “an 8-year-old trying to soothe a 6-year-old.”
• Key Practice: Rehearse and anchor physical feelings of “adult you” (aligned spine, open chest, safe, capable).
  • “You have to work the muscle of being an adult you.” (Sarah, 29:50)

Step 2: Differentiate from Your Parts [32:45]

• Most people are “overcoupled”—they think they ARE their part rather than seeing it as one aspect.
• Practices:
  • Recall a moment of being “adult you;” write down the feelings/sensations.
  • Then connect to a vulnerable part or protector, ask how old they are, what they feel, what they want to say.
  • Tools: “As if”—Imagine talking to a child who feels what your vulnerable part feels; what would you do/say?
• Quote: “There is nothing that any 5-year-old could do that would make them bad… They are not inherently bad. They are inherently innocent and good.” (Sarah, 34:52)

Step 3: Introduce Your Self to the Parts [36:20]

• Many internal parts do NOT know you’ve grown up; they respond as if the world is still unsafe.
  • Practice: “Have them look at you; ask them how old do you think I am?”
  • Walk them through a “film strip” of your life so they see you now as an adult.

Step 4: Build a Relationship—Consistent, Daily Contact [38:08]

• Consistency: Show up daily. It’s not enough to comfort parts only when they’re upset.
• Tangible Practice:
  • Imagine caring for a foster child; what daily rituals would create safety and trust?
  • Create gentle reminders—photos, notes, morning or evening rituals shared with your parts.

Step 5: Comforting in Distress—Attuned, Fierce Presence [41:45]

• The role of the “ferocious defender”—being both wildly protective and deeply attuned/soft.
  • Let parts know: “I am not afraid of what scares you. I will defend you at all costs.”
  • Quote: “They need you to be soft and attuned and ferociously protective… That’s what your parts need to feel in your system.” (Sarah, 43:27)

Consistency is Key:

• “When this happens… I am free to live the life I am here to live. And all parts of me are free too.” (Sarah, 47:23)

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Q&A Segment

Starts at [31:11]

1. Do You Need to Know the Exact Age of Each Part?

[31:11 – 37:38]

• Summary: No—you don’t need to identify the precise age of every part. Focus on the primary few (the major wounds and their associated protectors). Healing these can ripple out to many others.
• Developmental Stage Matters: Attunement changes depending on whether the part is preverbal, a young child, or a teenager, because “the way you comfort a preverbal baby is very different than the way you comfort a 17-year-old.” (Sarah, 35:29)
• Use your body’s memory (“When was the first time I felt this way?”) rather than your mind.

2. How Do You Move Through Anger, Resentment, and Rage Towards Abusive/Neglectful Parents?

[38:11 – 51:45]

• Personal Journey: Sarah shares her trajectory—initial inability to feel anger (it was unsafe as a child), then experiencing healthy aggression as she built safety and capacity, before finally accessing righteous anger and releasing it in a somatic context.
• Key Practice: True healing happens in the body, often requiring repetition, safety, and guided therapeutic work.
  • Quote: “That energy [anger] became the appropriate rage. And in a therapeutic container, I was able to feel the appropriate response to the experience… my organism took over.” (Sarah, 47:07)
• Outcome: Eventually, Sarah felt true indifference and release from her relationship to her perpetrator—her parts no longer looked for care from unsafe people, and the “reparenting” was complete.
• Quote (on release): “All I kept saying over and over was, ‘I am everything and I am nothing...’ It was one of the most profoundly spiritual moments of my life.” (Sarah, 50:15)

3. Why Is Basic Self-Care So Hard for Some, Even if High-Functioning?

[54:03 – 62:17]

• Possible Causes:
  • Childhood neglect or lack of modeling (never learned how to attune to and meet needs).
  • Survival or “freeze” response—cut off from one’s own body and self-needs.
  • Overriding survival patterns (e.g., ignoring pain).
  • “It can even feel like it’s babying ourselves to take care of ourselves.”
• Practical Tool:
  • Set up systems as if you were caring for a young child (e.g. putting iron supplements where you see them, with notes). Start with one thing at a time.
  • Celebrate progress, fall in love with the process, and recognize nobody is a finished product.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “You make sense. All parts, always.” (Sarah, 00:08)
• On Protectors: “You can run a giant company with a hundred thousand employees and be in a protective part, not be in your adult self.” (Sarah, 16:25)
• On Reparenting: “You become the home your parts have been waiting for… When this happens, we are safe to take risks in the world. We aren't looking for anyone to rescue us. And that means every relationship is additive.” (Sarah, 46:50)
• On Healing: “You never have to do this work with the people who harmed you, ever. The beautiful thing is we can do all this work in our therapeutic containers.” (Sarah, 48:20)
• Transformational Release: “It was the most beautiful experience of darkness… and it was the first time I felt totally free in my life… I am everything and I am nothing.” (Sarah, 50:15)
• On Self-Care: “None of us are a finished product… I know the pioneers in my field, and I can tell you, they are not finished products. We’re all on our journey.” (Sarah, 58:38)

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:15 – Introducing parts work & overall purpose
• 12:30 – Explaining protectors and how they operate
• 16:45 – The concept of Self energy
• 23:24 – Why reparenting matters; “beautiful prison” metaphor
• 28:15 – Steps to tangible reparenting work start
• 31:11 – Q&A with Rachel begins
• 31:38 – “Do I need to know the age of each part?”
• 38:11 – On moving through anger and resentment to freedom
• 54:03 – “Why is self-care so hard even when high functioning?”

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Final Thoughts & Resources

Sarah shares that consistent, loving, attuned contact with our fragmented parts creates inner safety and empowerment, allowing us to choose growth and freedom instead of survival-driven limitation. She normalizes the non-linear, layered nature of the journey, and reminds listeners that they are not broken—each part makes sense given their history.

• Further resources: Sarah’s “You Make Sense” program, free quiz for somatic healing, and her email community (linked in show notes).

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This episode is a must-listen for those seeking not just “why” they feel stuck, but exactly “how” to begin reparenting, loving, and reclaiming the wholeness that trauma scattered. Sarah’s vulnerability and precision offer a rare, powerful blend of clinical wisdom and lived experience.

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Sarah, and welcome to youo Makesense. I'm a somatic experiencing practitioner, an expert on trauma resolution, attachment parts work, and nervous system regulation. This podcast is a manual to understanding your human experience so that you can navigate the world with freedom, ease, empowerment, and create the life that you desire. Remember, you make sense all parts always. We've done a lot of episodes that guide us through the process of understanding our parts. When I say parts, I'm talking about the different versions of ourselves. IFS is a wonderful modality that guides us through the understanding of what that process looks like. So, anyway, we've talked about understanding the facets of our parts. In this episode, we're going to really hone in on how do we actually reparent them. The purpose of reparenting our parts isn't just to reparent them. It's so that we can live the life we are here to live. I say this a lot, but when we're doing reparenting work, what we're actually doing is allowing our parts to rest so that we can be free. And in a moment, I'm going to guide you through some of that process. I also just want to name if you're really wanting to dive deeply into this work, I have lots of programs that provide that kind of support. We'll link out the wait list to those in the show notes so that you can get on those wait lists if you're interested, as they come out throughout each year. So the first thing that I want to do before we get into the practical process of what reparenting looks like is just do a brief recap on understanding parts themselves. And I do invite you to go listen to the full episodes that dive deeply into the understanding of parts work, if you haven't done that already. So first, how do parts develop and what are they? We come into this experience of life as one whole being. And I will say for a lot of us that when I say we come into this experience, we may have only had a moment of coming into existence where we. Where we were able to feel and experience what it's like to be one whole being. For some of us, that may have been just the beginnings of being an embryo. And even in the womb, we already had fragmented parts. If you're like me and others of us develop parts along the way. But to go back to what I was saying, so. So we are one whole being. And by the way, your soul, your body, your life force wants to come back into wholeness. It knows how to do that, and it is just waiting for the conditions necessary to make that happen, which is a part of what we're here to talk about today. So we're one whole being. Along the way in life, we experience traumas or things that overwhelm our system. The result of that is parts of us get fragmented off from our whole self. Now, that part is not a whole separate identity like did. Dissociative Identity Disorder is what that stands for. But they are connected via. Think of it like a cord to us. So they're a version of us. So let's say if in, you know, your mother's room, womb, she experienced a trauma and was highly dysregulated, you will have a part that fragments off. I'm not safe. Because if she's not safe, you're not safe. And then let's say when I'm born, my caregivers were not able to emotionally. Emotionally attuned with me. A part fragments off. They get divorced along the way and aren't able to support me through that process. Another part fragments off. I'm bullied in school. Another part fragments off. I am heartbroken for the first time and feel a sense of betrayal by either friends or maybe your first significant other. Another part fragments off. So you get the idea. All these parts fragment. What occurs is if we don't bring those parts resolution to what they experienced, they're locked in time. That means they're stuck in that moment that they experience, and that's the only world that they know. So we continue growing, but those parts don't. And so what occurs is I'm in my adult life and my threat detector, which lives in our brainstem, called neuroception. It's always looking out into the world to see if we're safe or not. And it also looks internally. That's called interoception. The way that it decides if you're safe is by looking to an internal computer system that has every lived experience you ever had inside of it. It doesn't look for identical match. It looks for flavorings or similarities. So let's say that you move to a new city for a job and you don't know anybody. And your threat detector saying, what does this remind me of? And maybe in sixth grade, your family moved to a new town and you didn't know anyone. So it says, ooh, this is kind of like when I was in sixth grade. And then you go to your job and everybody knows everybody. And maybe at first they're not the most open, they're kind. But they're not the most open. So it looks to what was it like when I was in school? Because that's the comparison school and work and maybe in sixth grade, when I moved to that new town, I was severely bullied and I cried every day before going to school. So what occurs is the threat detector says, this must be just like when I was in sixth grade. Now it's not like I was when I was in sixth grade, but it has enough flavorings. So in that moment, all of the sudden, I'm no longer in 2025, or, I don't know, maybe you're listening to this in 2040, whatever year it is, I'm not in that year anymore. I'm back in sixth grade. And so your nervous system, your vagal tone or the shape of your nervous system will actually change in that moment. And it's as if I am back in that classroom. I am back in that town. I am no longer the woman that I am. I am a little girl. This is a part that is now present in my body. So I have that. That vulnerable part. And I'm going to get into describing the different types of parts. So I have this vulnerable part. Those are one cluster of parts. Those are the ones that experienced the origin, wounding the core, wounding the biggest suffering or pain. So that part of me that felt like I am totally exposed, there's no one to protect me, I am overwhelmed. I don't feel like I belong. I don't feel safe. Okay, that's the vulnerable part. I feel that part's affect in my body. So panic, overwhelm. Now we have these other parts called protectors. The protector's job is to ensure that the vulnerable part never feels what they felt, felt in the past. They usually develop pretty close to when the vulnerable part develops because their job is to ensure that that part is safe. So if your caregivers couldn't properly protect you, even if maybe they wanted to, they didn't know how. They didn't have the ability in their own nervous system to do that, do that protecting of themselves, so they couldn't do it for you. So I developed this protector. And that protector does two things. They look out into the world with the threat detector to see if they're. If you're safe or not. And they're always trying to ensure that the bad thing doesn't happen again. So that protector that is defending that sixth grader, their job is to be hypervigilant towards how anything could be the same. So let's say you're at this new job. Your part, that protector is not oriented towards what's working or how people are nice. It's oriented towards how are they not nice, how are they not loving, how are they not inviting, how are they not compassionate, how do they think I'm not as good as them, how are they cruel to me, and so on and so forth. And because it's superimposing past on the present, it's going to see things that might not actually be there. Meaning, let's say you have a coworker that had a bad day, they're fighting with their spouse, they get to work and they're just in a bad mood. My protector is going to see the lack of affect on their face, meaning lack of expression as a cue of danger. So instead of saying, I don't know what that's about, something's going on in their life. They've only known me for one day, so clearly it's not about me. My protector says that is about me and I'm about to get bullied or they're going to be cruel to me because it's hyper vigilant towards how what happened in the past may happen again. So they're responding to external stimuli. Stimuli they're also responding to. The vulnerable parts affect. It's very reflexive. So the moment the vulnerable part feels panic, the protector comes online. The moment the vulnerable part feels shame, the protector comes online. It's very, very, very reflexive. Gonna give you one more example of how these parts work in a relationship. Let's say you, your partner is sharing something with you that you did that hurt their feelings. And so as they share that, you have a vulnerable part that was made to feel like they were bad. So even though your partner is not saying you're bad, it, it activates the same kind of experience or response. And all of a sudden I feel this overwhelming shame like, or I, I'm, I'm so bad. So it's this little part, maybe they're five in immediacy. The protector comes in, they respond to that shame that, that part's feeling. And they might do something like deflect. So I, I make an excuse for it. I get, get kind of harsh or hardened or angry. That's the protector. So I just want you to see how the protector is responding to the vulnerable part. The last version of parts that I want to introduce you to is self. Self is who you actually are. Self is your truest version of you. It is you anchored in today, not you anchored in past experiences. Most People are navigating life, spending, you know, very little time anchored in self. And that's because we all have protectors that are very, they're called self like parts that are very good at mimicking adult us. You can run a giant company with a hundred thousand employees and be in a protective part, not be in your adult self. These protectors are intelligent, they are capable, they are able. And for many of us they have saved our lives. But they're very different than being in self energy. When we are in our truest self, our adult self, we feel anchored, we feel present, we feel here, we feel capable, we feel able. We know that no matter what, we are going to be okay. I often use nature to describe what it's like to be in self. If you've ever seen like a lion walking in his pride or a lioness, and they're fully regulated, they are in powerful self energy. Like they're not afraid. They're not afraid of anything. And they know, like they know, like they know everything is going to be okay. They walk with incredible intention. Just look up, you know, lion walking. You'll be able to witness it. There isn't a hurry. And every step is taken, as I named, with wild power in intentionality. And the energetic quality that they're giving out into the world is I am, I am nothing more than me, and I am nothing less than me. And I won't apologize for being me. And I am not afraid. Even though life is filled with things that are challenging, I am not, not afraid. And I can defend myself and I can defend others. And I listen deeply to everything around me. I listen to the my own drumbeat of internal knowingness and intuition. It's a really powerful thing. It's honestly the thing that we're all wanting to experience. And it doesn't have to be a lion that does this alone. You know, a moth does this, a caterpillar does this. Every being in nature is doing this. And part of our work is to come into the power that resides inside of ourselves, this force of self energy. And we have to harness the power of that in order to do the reparenting process. So now what I want to talk about is how do we actually comfort or greet these parts that are perpetually stuck living in the past. First of all, we have to know who these parts are. If we don't know who they are, we can't comfort them. So if we don't know that these parts exist, and how would we, if no one taught us this, then what occurs is Our nervous system protects them in the form of dysregulation or stuckness. Our nervous system and the protective parts work together like a team. And if you're finding yourself living a smaller life than you feel called to, this means that you have protectors who are saying, I don't think that life is safe. And they're going to do everything in their power and work with your nervous system, which is the strongest system really on earth, to ensure that you don't step towards that which they don't know is safe. I used to call this the invisible wall. And I had this occurring in my life, all over the place. So if you're feeling like I don't even know what my purpose is, I can't even connect with it, that's a clue that this is happening. If you find yourself chronically dysregulated, this is a clue that this is happening. If you suffer with insomnia, chronic illness, also a clue. If you can't seem to actualize the life that you want. So I can't do the things I want, like travel, take a salsa dancing class, meet new friends, build community, sing, write that book, dance, pick up that hobby. If I feel inhibited in my life, living that smaller life, it's all. They're all clues that your parts, your protective parts don't know you exist. And they think that the life that you're wanting is not safe for you. Why is that? Because more often than not, the life that we want is a life that was once dangerous or inhibited in the past. Not the exact life, but the flavorings of it. So, you know, to be fully expressed, what does that mean? I have to surrender. I have to let go, I have to allow, I have to use my voice. I have to take up space, I have to be seen, I have to make mistakes. I have to be messy. I have to love and be loved. I have to be vulnerable and open. If those things were unavailable or dangerous in the past, your parts are going to say, let's not do that. And we can get to a place in our healing where this small life we're living goes from being like a dangerous, painful prison to a beautiful prison. I've talked about this before. Those are words that I used on my journey where I reached a point where I had more relative, you know, regulation in my nervous system. But I hadn't fully done the parts work. And so I was letting my parts, like children, run my life. And if you had a child who had a really, you know, not so great experience and my. We've renovated a house now so they live inside this beautiful home and they've got toys in it and they've got you in it. They might say, like, let's just in this house, it's really nice in here. I don't want to go out into the yard. I don't want to go on the adventure. I don't want to go to that kid's sleepover. It's too scary. A good parent doesn't say, you're right, we can just stay inside here. A good parent says, I know this is so comfortable and we're going to go out into the world because there's more for you. I want more for you, but I'm not going to send you out alone. I'm going to take your hand. And so this is our work. This is the reparenting process that we have to get into. We don't reparent our parts for the sake of doing it. We reparent our parts so we can end their suffering, which ends your suffering. So in ending their suffering, that allows you to be free. You make sense is something that I have been saying for a very long time. It began by saying it to myself as I was venturing on my own healing journey. It became so clear to me how I wasn't broken and things weren't confusing. They and I made so much sense. And then I found myself saying it to my individual clients when I had an individual practice. And then it moved beyond that into creating programs and offerings for other people around the world so they could experience that too. One of those programs is called you'd make Sense. And inside of that program, I take over a decade of clinical training and therapeutic expertise and I bring it all together in one place. More often than not. On our healing journeys, we have to go to so many different providers to get different interventions or modalities. Things like parts work or ifs somatic experiencing and that kind of embodied work, boundary work, attachment and relational work. That's what I had to do on my journey. And it's an exhausting process to have to find so many different practitioners to go to. Umake sense came into existence because what I realized was how much each of these modalities need each other like a web, in order for us to experience holistic healing. So all of them are brought together inside of this program so that you don't have to go to multiple clinicians or practitioners. You can get it all here in one place. The program also brings you through a roadmap that is necessary for holistic change and healing. It's not public knowledge that there's actually an order to the healing process. And when we follow that order, things happen in a really expedited way. This program is only offered twice a year, so I invite you to get on the wait list for it. We've linked that in the show notes and when you join the waitlist, you get limited time access to reduced pricing. Check out the show notes to join. So now I want to talk about how we do this. What's the practical road to reparenting our parts? Number one, you must build your capacity to be in your adult self. When people say that parts work or ifs doesn't work, it's usually because whomever is supporting you does not understand this most vital foundational piece, which is you cannot comfort your parts until you're actually anchored in being that lion or lioness, meaning in adult you. This begins with bringing regulation to your nervous system. Otherwise what happens is when you try to do parts work, you have a scared part and you have a protector trying to comfort them. So imagine like a six year old is in distress and an eight year old is trying to calm them down. It's not going to really work. A part of why it's going to work, not work, is because that's another child trying to comfort a child. The other reason is because the only person that is not going to be threatened or afraid by our young parts activation is our truest self. I say this all the time, but in order to effectively do parts work, it's very important that we are not scared of our parts scared. And I know that is not proper English. I'm saying it on purpose. What I mean by that is that whatever feels overwhelming to them, it must not feel overwhelming to us. Sort of like if you came to me to do therapeutic work and I was scared of what scared you? Oh my goodness, wouldn't that be scary? The person who's supposed to help me is scared of this. Then who's going to help me? I'm not going to be okay. It's important that I am undeterred, unthreatened, unbothered, unfazed even by what might be happening in someone else's nervous system. That doesn't mean I'm not deeply attuned and and have deep care and reverence for you, but I'm not afraid of it. So number one, you have to build your capacity to be an adult. You. That means number one. So a sub bullet point of what number one is, is Regulation of your nervous system, that has to be the primary focus for you. Second is work the muscle of feeling what it's like to be an adult you. So all you have to do is pick one or two moments where you have felt capable and able or you have felt profoundly connected to all things. It might be a spiritual moment. Bring it to life in your body again and again and again. Your physiology actually changes when you're an adult. You, you've your, your spinal column comes into alignment, your chest opens up, your fascia releases, your neck is able to be exposed, you can expose the carotid. When we're dysregulated, we hide that, so we collapse or we raise our shoulders as a way to ensure no one's going to bite. This very, this place that could cause death. And if you're saying that sounds very animal, like, well, you are an animal, this is the way it works. So if you change your physiology, it changes the part that's present in your body, which is why I use nature a lot to help us change our physiology. So you can think of something that's powerful in nature and imagine that you are giving, you are putting that on in your own body. So practice, practice, practice. The more that you practice being an adult you in adult you, the more that it becomes a reflex. So we have to begin working that muscle. That's key. That, that is the first principle of parts work. Next, we have to differentiate from our parts. Most of us are over coupled with them, so we can't tell the difference between us and them. You cannot come to the aid of your parts if you think they're you. So the differentiation process begins with feeling what it's like to be adult. You and your body feel that. Then what I want you to do is make notes of that. What is it like? Write that down. Next thing I want you to do is connect to a vulnerable part and a protector. Usually we have a handful of vulnerable parts and a handful of protector parts, but just see if you can even make contact with one. What is the thing that feels most overwhelming and scary? And I want you to ask yourself, when is the first time I remember feeling that? When is the first time I remember feeling that? That's going to clue you into who the part is, how old they are from that place. You can also ask yourself, are they big or small? Are they capable, able? And ask them to speak to you. If they could tell you something, what would they say? So what I want you to do, as you're bringing them alive in your body is to feel their vagal tone, meaning the way that they feel when they inhabit your system is very different than when you're in your adult self. You know, they might feel scared and little and overwhelmed and like they need to curl up into a ball. So what do they feel like? I want you to see them. What do they look like? So now that I've done that, I've effectively differentiated I am not them. And see what it's like to look at a five year old who's scared and see them as separate from you. They are not you, they're a version of you. Another way that we can differentiate is using an as if tool. So imagine you are with a scared 5 year old. Would you be afraid of what makes them scared? Probably not, right? If a 5 year old was like, oh my gosh, I feel like I'm gonna die right now. I'm so bad, I'm so bad, I'm so bad, I'm so bad. I would never think a 5 year old was bad ever. There is Nothing that any 5 year old could do that could make them bad. They are not inherently bad. They're inherently innocent and good. And I feel that fully from adult me. My 5 year old did not feel that way. So I have to differentiate from her to begin the process of reparenting. So we want to do that with the vulnerable part. We also want to do that with your protector. Who are the protectors? Protectors are people, are parts like perfectionists, parts that self sabotage, parts that avoid, parts that erupt in anger, parts that are perfectionists, doers, achievers, the class clown. All of these are protectors. So who are my protectors? The parts that use things like alcohol, to numb food, to numb eating disorder, to numb ocd, to control all protectors. So who are my protectors? And then we want to connect to that part. How old are they? We must fall in love with the vulnerable parts and you must fall in love with the protector. A lot of us hate our protectors because we think they're causing us our suffering in our lives. What's important to see is that they've never been trying to do that. They've been trying to make sure the vulnerable part is safe and they're tired. So we have to earn their trust and earn their love. So we differentiate who are both parts. Feel the difference of them in your body and write that down. The next thing that we do is we have to introduce ourself to them. I've worked with so many people doing parts work and Myself. And when I usually ask this, I say, okay, now that we have your vulnerable part here, can you have them look at you? And I want you to ask them how old they think you are. And people are like, well, they know how old I am. And I said, well, no, actually they might not up ask them. And it's very common that they'll look at us and say, I don't know. They think I'm 13, they think I'm 16. They do not know because they've been stuck in that moment of time in time that you have grown up to be an adult. Because this is the first experience of you meeting each other. So I want you to ask them how old they think you are. And if they think you're younger than you are, your job is to then just bring them through like a film strip your life. So just catch them up on all the things. Actually went to college. And then I did this other thing, and then I did this other thing and now I'm this age. And then I want them to look at your face and let them see the beautiful elder that you are. Let them see the lines on your face, let them see the age on your hands so they can actually make contact with you. Really important part of the process. And then we have to begin building a relationship. So now that we understand the parts, we've differentiated, we've introduced ourselves to them, now we do the relationship building. This is the order that we do the whole process in. So number one, daily practice. How do you build a relationship with someone? Do you do that by just showing up when they're in distress? No, we do that through consistent connection. So something that I'd like you to do is think about what didn't my parts get when I was a kid, what didn't they get to experience, what did they love, what did they want to try? And you can use an as if tool here. Imagine that on your doorstep, you opened it up and it was a little, beautiful, perfect child. And you read the. There was a folder that had their case history in it and you read it and it was just like yours. And so how would you tend to this child that was in need of love and safety and connection? You would show up for them and you wouldn't just show up once a week, you would show up every day. That's what we need to do with our parts. So it doesn't mean that you're quitting your job and you're becoming a stay at home parent. It does mean that I'm checking in with them. So even having like a photo of a part that's on your desk or in your house, or taking two moments a day and saying, okay, in my morning practice, like I go outside in my backyard and I hear birds and I smell a smell and I hear and I take in things that I see, the beautiful nature around me. I take my parts and do that with them and I just hold them for a minute and show them love. I love you and I'm here for you. And at first you might say, I don't actually love them and I don't even really know them. So I'm talking about what I, what I do is, is after, you know, a decade of doing parts work. But at the beginning it might be like I show up with this part and we go outside and we do this thing. And I just want you to know, just like if you had that foster child, at first you'd look at each other and the foster child would be like, I don't know who you are, this feels kind of uncomfortable. And then you as the parent, if you haven't been a parent before, would be like, like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm really not so confident in this. And it might not feel like the most comfortable relationship at first. This is what it's like to build a relationship with our part. So just know that's to be expected. I want you to do that on a daily basis. The more that we do this, the more that we fall in love with them, the more that they trust us. Next. When you are stepping into challenging things in life, just know your parts are going to say, I don't think that's safe. I don't think that's safe. I don't think that's safe. And your job is to hear them. Just like a kid if they had to go on a field trip their first overnight weeks before, a good parent would say, I know this is gonna be stressful for my kids, so I'm gonna work on processing that with them and showing them how they're safe and I'm here for them. So if you wanna go faster in life, you wanna get unstuck as you step towards challenging things, you have to reparent the parts in the process. Next, when you're in high distress, of course this is a time where we have to get hold of our adult self to comfort our young parts. And it's very common that our protector is going to come in and say, I can do it. But what they actually need is adult you. So it's very important, like let's say you're. You're in a big fight with your partner to pause and say, I need to go get adult me. And remember I talked about, about a bit ago, you have to work the muscle of being an adult you. The reason you have to work that muscle is because I want you to have a strong neural pathway for it so you can easily get adult you online. So when the young parts are in distress, I know how to get adult me here. All I have to do is think about that moment that I've brought to life fifty times, a hundred times, and then it's present for me, and then I comfort the part. Now, the other thing I want to say here is there are two things that your parts need in order for you to be a successful parent to them. They need you to be soft and attuned and ferociously protective. Soft and attuned. So my ability to empathize with them, to hear them, to get down on their level and listen to them, to provide them the softness of support and loving kindness, and to adore them and cherish them, they also need you to be their ferocious defender. So they need to feel in your system that you are not afraid of what scares them and that you will defend them at all costs, just like you would a child or your own child. And they need to feel that energetic quality in your body. So the way that we can get into this in a way that doesn't feel scary for them, particularly if they experienced any violence or, or unhealthy aggression as a child, is thinking about this like your parent. Me, I have a superpower that I can turn on anytime. I need to protect you or anyone else who needs protection. And then I want you to work the muscle of being in that. You can do that by thinking about if something, you know, for my dog, if something bad happened to him, what would I do? Well, I would immediately know how to solve it. I would call a vet. I would find the best specialist. I would get him there. That's my healthy protector. If I saw someone being harmed in the world, what do I do? My impulse is to protect. So we want that younger part to see that you are that protector. And we need to work the muscle of both of those things. When you do this, you become the home that your parts have been waiting for. Even if you had really loving parents, they couldn't get everything right. And our job when we're doing this work is to pick up where our parents left off and become what the parts didn't get. The more you do this, the more you become the person they look to when they're afraid. You're the person they primarily look to for love. You are the the internal mother, father, parent. You are the internal home. When this happens, we are safe to take risks in the world. We are safe to be in the world. We aren't looking for anyone to rescue us. And that means every relationship is additive. I am choosing from choice instead of survival in every area of my life. And this takes the consistent reparenting of our parts, not just occasionally consistently. And it takes falling in love with them and cherishing them. And when this happens, no longer am I stuck living a smaller life. I am free to live the life I am here to live. And all parts of me are free too. Not sure where to start with Somatic Healing. My free quiz what's keeping you stuck? Will equip you with a personalized guide and tangible, tangible trauma informed tools to help you regulate your nervous system. Check out the link in the show notes to get started. So let's get to the Q and A portion of this episode. We've got our lovely Rachel back here with us today. Hey Rach, how are the questions for this week?

[B]

Oh, they are really great. And this question, I have seen a lot in the community so yes, it's a really interesting question. Is it necessary to determine the age of our parts? As someone with complex ptsd, a lot of my trauma was pre verbal which made it hard to discover with words. I'm wondering how this will impact parts work if it will be more difficult to acknowledge and address specific parts.

[A]

You do not need to know the age of every single part, certainly not the exact age. And you also, by the way, you don't need to know every single part that was fragmented off. We usually have some main players, so we have a couple of main vulnerable parts. Those were the ones that experienced the biggest traumas in our life or the core wounding. And then we have a few main players of protectors, the ones that really went to work and were around the predominant amount of time in somatic experiencing, which is a trauma modality. Peter Levine, who's really one of the pioneers in trauma resolution, described resolving trauma as a whole as imagining that there are many trauma vortices. So if in front of me is my whole life, there might have been, if you have complex trauma like myself, thousands and thousands of these trauma vortices, think of them like little bubbles or balloons. And a lot of people say this to me Too, like, oh my gosh, do I have to address every single one? Which is similar to do I have to know every single part? But the truth is, when you address one, especially these more predominant ones or the bigger ones that were repeated, when you address that one and it dissolves, all the others shrink. So you don't have to get to the 10,000, everything shrinks. Then you address another one and it dissolves and all of the others shrink. And so when we address these main traumatic experiences, it brings resolution to, to others. And the same goes for working with our parts. I, it would take me like 25 lifetimes to address every single traumatic experience I had because of. There was such repetitive, daily complex trauma I was experiencing as a child. And multiple times a day sometimes. So, so you don't have to go back to all those experiences. Greeting that part in one and bringing them resolution in one ripples out to all the others. So that's really important to know in terms of distinguishing age. You don't need to know that in an exacting way. What we do need to get a sense of is, oh, this part is preverbal. I don't need to know, you know, at what age that makes them, but I do know that they're preverbal. The reason I need to know that, for example, is because the way that you comfort a preverbal baby is very different than the way you comfort a 17 year old. And our parts, I know it might, this might seem like imaginary stuff. It's not. They're very real. They, these parts live in your body. Their vagal tone, the shape of their nervous system is stored inside of you. And anytime they're activated or triggered, that vagal tone of your own nervous system comes online. Like, wow, they're real. That's very real. This isn't made up. So imagine if I was to talk to a 17 year old like this. This. Hi, honey. You seem really upset right now. Do you want to take my hand? What's happening? Right? My. A teenager would be like, they would swear at me first of all and then they'd tell me to buzz off in pretty, probably a pretty harsh way. I would never speak to a teenager like that. I might speak to a three year old that way, though. And I would certainly not speak to a preverbal part like this and say, it makes so much sense to me that you're feeling afraid. I understand why you are based on what you experienced in the past, and I just want you to know I'm right here. I know I haven't earned your trust up until now. And I know I've even made you feel like I've been manipulating you to try to get you to stop doing what you're doing. And I'm sorry that I haven't been here. I might talk to a 17 year old that way. You talk to a 5 month old baby that way. They have no idea what you're trying to communicate. So my point in what I'm trying to say is why do we need to know how old they are? Because the way that you relate or orient to a person differs depending on their development. And so I have to really get clear on who are they? And a way that we do this, everybody is by asking ourselves when was the first time I remember feeling this in my life? Or and by the way, when I say ourselves, ask your body, not your mind, when is the first time I remember feeling this? Your body will tell you things that your mind will be surprised by. So if it's. I feel a whole for myself. I was always holding me. My fascia was really tight. I really didn't know how to fully surrender, certainly not into another person. And then the hardest one was to surrender into a romantic relationship because that reminded my system the most of the past. If I really felt into this, this, this experience of holding, what came to me was. And it wasn't a cognitive thought, it was my body telling me that as an embryo I was never held, really held in a safe way. There is no linear procedural memory involved in that. Procedural memory is like I woke up this morning, I brushed my teeth, I fed my dog, da da da da da. That wasn't occurring. It was somatic memory and it, it was my, my physiology talking to me. So we have to get clear on how old are those parts because that little me in a womb didn't understand language. But what that little part does understand is the felt sense experience of safety. So we have to do that inquiry and once we know who they are then we can comfort them.

[B]

Yeah. So not necessarily having to know the exact age but an idea of the developmental stage. So then you can attune with them in a way that is going to be meaningful and helpful rather than.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like the eye roll of the teenager.

[A]

Right. Or the eight year old. That's like I don't know why you're talking to me. Like, you know, I understand philosophy and the meaning of existence. I'm eight and I'm really sad that that my friend is moving away into a different town. You telling me that they're moving there because their dad or their mom has a better 4 way, 401k plan does not actually help me feel better. You know what I mean? So there's a different way of relating and that's, that's the reason we have to know the, the, the approximate age. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And you shared a bit about your childhood of experiencing a lot of trauma. And this question is asking a bit about that. So this person asks. Hi. After hearing what you were put through as a child, I am wondering what are the main things you had to do to get over all the resentment and frustration? I find myself angry most of the time, and I know it's only hurting me, but I'm trying to find tools to overcome things as I hear and see the same people who have been using me as their target my whole life.

[A]

Well, for myself, my appropriate, healthy aggression. So that's the appropriate response to whatever has occurred to you. Had to be internalized. Because I grew up in, you know, I was sexually abused for a very long time and then severely neglected. It wouldn't have been a safe environment for me to express the appropriate response. So my nervous system held that inside. It's important to name here that healthy aggression always matches what's happening to you. So the bigger the trauma or the more severe it is, the more intense the appropriate response would be if I had loving caregivers whom showed up for me and loved me dearly, and yet they were chronically fighting all the time and I was in an environment where they were bickering and fighting and not connected and they didn't realize that was affecting me. I have anger, but it's not rage. It's different. Or if it is rage, it's. It's not rage. The same intensity of if my life was truly being threatened or there was no safety to be found. So I just want to name that. So I had a lot of rage, a lot of healthy aggression that was internalized. That internalization becomes shame. And that internalization and shame and all of that energy became chronic illness for me. So that's how my. That's how it was manifesting in my life. I was totally shut down. Lots of shame and very sick and autoimmune diseases and stuff. Then I got to a place where my system said, I think you might be safer because I wasn't in that house anymore. I wasn't even. I went to college in Boston. I grew up in New Hampshire, went to college in Boston. It was still inhibited there. Then I moved to Los Angeles and started to disconnect more from my family of origin. And I was far enough away that my nervous system said, I think you're a little bit safer now then. So I felt it a little bit, but still not much. Like, people would bump into me. I mean, literally, like, step on my toe. And my reflex was to say, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Everywhere I went, I'm sorry. Someone hurts me, I'm sorry. I'll just internalize everything because it's not safe to do the. Otherwise, people didn't show up for me. People didn't meet my needs. People were unkind. People were. And I would feel bad for them. So it continued. Then I started my therapeutic work. More safety. Now that I had more safety, what started to happen was my system said, okay, I think we might be able to get some of this energy out of her body that's poisoning her. And I mean that everyone. It is literally poisoning us. It was making me very, very sick emotionally and physically. And so my system said, oh, cool, okay, she has some access now. So what we're going to do is we're going to first have her experience this. Everything is not fine. And all of a sudden, I noticed I didn't feel okay. I wasn't always just looking to the positive, which is what I was doing as a survival response. And things started to irritate me that didn't before. Like, why has this friend canceled on me seven times? That bothers me now. And it didn't bother me enough to say something, but it bothered me enough to feel the affect of being bothered. Then I started to notice in my marriage that I got into with, you know, marriage. Every relationship has an unwritten contract if you're not conscious of yourself. And that means that I came into it replicating my childhood in a lot of ways. I was invisible, had no needs, Easy, easygoing. You know, all the things when you're inhibited. And then I started to realize. Realize this isn't actually fine. This bothers me. So I experienced being bothered. Then I experienced resentment. All of that is access to healthy aggression. And my system was saying, it's easier to do that with this man in front of you that I was married to because he was safe for me. He replicated a lot of things in my childhood, but he was not dangerous like they were. He was safe. And so it was a. Was a landing place that I could express that. What I couldn't feel was anger towards my mother or my stepfather. My stepfather who abused me for a long time. I actually Felt bad for him. I was like, well, you know, I don't know. He was nice sometimes and, you know, he was pretty sensitive. My mom wasn't very nice to him. So, you know, and he was sexually abusing me for a lot of my childhood. But I couldn't feel it with my mother. I felt bad for her and she, you know, knew what was happening to me, did nothing and also neglected me and my other siblings in a very severe way. I couldn't be mad at my birth father for abandoning me. Just didn't feel it. I felt bad for all of these people because it was. My system was saying they're the most dangerous people to be angry at. If you were angry at them as a child, something really bad would have happened. So I'm just sharing this, the trajectory of how this process occurs. And then once I had more capacity, I had worked the muscle of saying to my ex husband, I'm mad at you, stop doing that. And I felt safe to do that now and safe to work that muscle and safe to do it with friends now. My system said, I think you're safe to be angry at the people that were the most dangerous as a child. And I was actually able to feel it. And then that anger became the appropriate rage. And in a therapeutic container, I was able to actually feel the appropriate response to the experience. So you never have to do this work with the people that harmed you, ever. If you have loving parents who just, you know, fell short because they all do, you never even have to have a conversation with them about it. Beautiful thing is we can do all of this work in our therapeutic containers. And for me that meant going back to state dependent memory with my stepfather and my mother. I did this, this using somatic experiencing. I did this using psychodrama, which, which I participated in also as a facilitator, but myself and was able to feel into that and my, my organism. So my body, not driven by my mind, completed the incomplete experience. And when this occurs, our systems, in many ways it's, it's really mystical, shamanic, spiritual, time traveling. My organism took over and meaning I wasn't in the driver's seat and I noticed, and this happened over the course of many sessions. But my hands almost felt like they were like talons. And I wasn't making them do that. They were completing something from 30 years ago. And I felt like I was shredding something, meaning like shredding someone, this animal part of me and getting them to stop, to stop harming me. I wasn't doing that Because I was just wanting to torture someone. My system was saying this is what it was I didn't have the ability to do, and now I can do it. And when it completes, this is called eye of the needle work. When we get to the highest degree of going back to the moment, to the most intense moment or moments of impact. And by the way, we have to build our capacity to get there. That's why I just shared this whole journey. And this art, when that happens, it gets imprinted as complete meaning it's over. I'm no longer stuck in that house. I'm no longer stuck in that experience that was for me. And I remember landing. It's very, very so scientific, this work, but so profoundly spiritual. And I remember landing in a moment and I had my eyes closed and all I saw was darkness, but not darkness in a bad way. It was the most beautiful experience of darkness with my dear mentor of mine was doing this work with me and tears are rolling down my face. And it was the first time I felt totally free in my life. And all I kept saying over and over was, I am everything and I am nothing. I am everything and I am nothing. And what I felt like was I was meeting creation in that moment, whatever you call that God, divine, universe, like I was touching it, I was in. And I was the ocean and the mountain and you and every living being. I was all things. I am actually connected now. So I am all of it and I am none of it all at once. And it was one of the most profoundly spiritual moments of my life. And that was the landing in it's over and I am free and our whole organism reorganizes. It's the reorganization process of that's done. It's what remediated the shame for me. And in a profound way, all the lead up was getting me there, but that really imprinted it. And then not long ago, I hadn't seen my, my mother in, oh, I don't know, maybe close to a decade. And my little sister, who is like my daughter, she's 10 years younger than me, but I've mothered her, it was her wedding and I was going to have to see my, my mother. And that happened last year. And I had a lot of feelings coming up and parts coming up, of course, around it. And it was one of the most profound moments on my journey because I remember walking into that room and seeing her and it was like I was seeing a stranger from another lifetime. I did not feel any anger. I also did not feel any attachment any Longer or any longing for her to be what she could never be. Because I had become mother to me. I had become home to me fully. My parts were no longer looking for her to be what she couldn't be. They. They were holding tightly to me. And I looked at this person who was now a stranger and a lifetime. And I also had some siblings there I haven't seen in about a decade whom are still in those repetition, repetitive patterns and are still suffering deeply like I was. And yeah, it was a realization of, like, wow, look at this long road I've walked. I am not back in that reality that they're all in anymore. And I don't even know who you are. And perhaps no one ever know. You don't know who you are because you haven't been able to be you. And it was a moment of honestly, like, bowing to her in a way of thank you for bringing me into this world. And I wouldn't be. Yeah, it makes me really emotional. I wouldn't be here, like, doing what we're doing today, you and I, this team that we have, if it wasn't for this journey. And in no way am I saying, like, aren't we lucky to suffer? Of course not. But that it has made me who I am and I could actually release her fully. And I already had. It was just the real time ceremony in many ways, of goodbye. And I will likely never see her again the rest of my life. And it's just, you know, when we think about like, like a lot of times, in a corny way, the metaphor of a caterpillar to butterfly is used. Caterpillar is a being and then it melts and its DNA goes away and it forms entirely new being, a new DNA. And that's what this process has been for me. And it was so beautiful to be able to have that experience of seeing, like, I'm not the caterpillar at all. Like, the, it was a, it was a real ceremony for me to come into. Really. What I, what I'm saying is indifference. Like, I felt nothing, not because I was disconnected, but because I had processed it. And what I, what I really was experiencing was the, the deep pride in myself for, like, wow, look what I've been able to do. And there's. And you can never hurt me again because my little parts have me and they're not afraid of you. So that's the journey we can all go on. And of course, my journey might be more of an extreme one than a lot of us, but if you've had Loving parents whom couldn't get it right. When you do this work, where it lands you in is your parts are now looking for you to be the parent. And they're no longer constantly set up for being frustrated or let down or hurt. And that means when you're a parent who doesn't know how to do intimacy with you, when they sew your shirt up that has a hole in it instead of saying like, hey, how did that breakup go? How are you feeling? Do you want to hug? And they say, oh, honey, give me your clothes. I'll wash them when you come to visit. And I sewed this thing up for you and I made you food. And that, that I know that is their way of loving me. And my parts aren't looking for them to do what they can't do and I can actually love them more fully. And it requires us processing this beautiful, healthy, important thing called healthy aggression.

[B]

Oh, thank you, Sarah, so much for sharing so deeply and so movingly. I feel like, yeah, what you've just shared is so big and beautiful and yeah, I'm in awe and in gratitude of you and what you give to everyone as a result of that journey you've taken.

[A]

Thanks, Rach.

[B]

Yeah, I feel emotional.

[A]

Thank you so much. Thank you for being a part of this with, with me and the journey that you've walked to. And I hope that, that everyone listening that you know that we do this because we love you, not because we just thought it would be a fun thing to have a podcast or to do this work in our, in our. The mission that we all have and the amazing team of people you don't know who cares so deeply about your healing behind the scenes that are a part of this and so deeply about your aliveness. That's why we do it. And if it's just one person, then that's enough that we help. So thank you, Rach.

[B]

Yeah. And, oh, this person's written at the bottom of their question that you're a hero of theirs. And so I'm so excited for this person to hear their question be read out and to get your wisdom. So, yeah, I just feel like, oh, it's a beautiful interconnected. Yeah, just web of wholesomeness that you're creating with the community. And yeah, so, yeah, I'm excited for this person to hear their question. I struggle with basic self care despite generally being high functioning, performing in school and work. For example, I struggle to take iron supplements even though I'm severely iron deficient and drink enough water even though I have Low blood pressure, fainting spells. This has been very confusing to try to figure out about myself. I think maybe I'm stuck in freeze. And there are multiple parts that think me actually feeling well isn't safe since I spent most of my life not feeling well. And in dorsal doing, the simplest action can just feel so hard. I look forward to your insights as you're a hero of mine. Thank you.

[A]

Thank you for your kind words and for being a part of this community and listening and absorbing all of this work that we do here. So there's a multitude of reasons why this might be happening. I want to name one possibility. If you were neglected as a child so you didn't get your primary needs met for whatever reason, then it's very common that we then in turn don't know how to do that for ourselves because it wasn't modeled. So it might be that I had a parent that wasn't available. They weren't there, they were dangerous to me. They loved me a lot, but they had to work six jobs and I had to fend for myself. Or it could be because I had a parent who was really identified with their little parts. So they were almost like a. Not almost. In many ways, they were like a little girl or a little boy or a little child raising me. So they didn't really know how to do it. The result of that is they didn't set me up for being able to caretake myself because they didn't even know how to caretake them. And this can show up in a lot of different ways. Like for example, let's say I had a caregiver, loving caregiver, who was neglected. And so when they got sick, nobody did anything. So that means when I got sick, they loved me, but they under responded. So I had. And you know, this happens to people all the time. Let's say you have like, you know, strep throat and they say, oh, you're fine, you can go to school, it'll be okay, I love you so much. Or you can stay home from school. And then it gets so bad that I can't even swallow. And you know, we could have gone to the doctor earlier. And it's not because they're purposely, you know, trying to neglect me or not take care of me. It's because that's what they knew and they don't know how to do it differently. So another example of why this can transpire is if we had to resource our dorsal vagal complex as a kid, so shut down, disconnect from my Feelings, my body as a whole, then we don't actually know how to listen to what our body needs. I'm not in flow with it, I'm not hearing it talk to me and then responding to it. And because of that, I'm going to under respond to what my body needs. It's also very common when we experience trauma that we have a very high threshold for suffering or pain beyond what our system actually has a threshold for. We can push, push, push, push. And that was something that I experienced. I really didn't even feel much physical pain because I was so disconnected from my body. I said this in other episodes, I think, but I remember so many times going to like the gym or a trainer, workout classes. And I would do whatever someone told me to do. I would somehow find a resource, energy in my body to lift something heavier than my body than people think I would be able to do, or do, or run further or do more reps and. And that was usually rewarded and celebrated. The truth is that that should not be celebrated. That was me, me being in survival and overriding my system because I was so disconnected from my pain threshold. And so for all of these reasons, we can really struggle to take care of ourselves and tend ourselves. It's very common for people to even feel like it's babying ourselves to take care of ourselves. I remember I had some friends who are so good at it. Even now, by the way, I want to name, none of us are a finished product. So this is something I still work on. My partner, he is in some ways better at it than me. He gets weekly massages. He also is in a motorcycle accident. So he, he needs it more than I do, but gets him weekly. It's incredible. Like what a good tending to himself and what a good use of resources, you know, rather than putting it towards something else. Because it's going to support his body to feel better, he's going to sleep better. And I still struggle with things like that. Like, well, what could I do in that hour and a half? Instead I could take Truman to acupuncture. That's my dog. So it's easier for me to be readily giving to others. And so I just want to name. I don't want anyone listening to think that you or I or anyone you look up to is a finished product. If you look up to the pioneers in my field of mental health, I personally know a lot of them and I can tell you they are not finished products. We're all on our journey, so here's what we have to do, we have to connect to the part of us that was neglected and didn't get their needs met. And then from my adult self, do I think it's babying that part of me to ensure that they aren't anemic. Is that babying this? Maybe that's like a 7 year old. I don't know. Part of me is that babying them? Of course not. And what would I do with a 7 year old or a 12 year old? Let's make them 12. Who was struggling to take their body. I wouldn't say, wow, you're a loser. You suck so bad that you forgot to take your vitamins seven days in a row. You're never going to be able to get it right. No. They were neglected their whole life. What would I do? I would set them up for success. So I would put their iron supplement out for them on the counter next to their breakfast. Probably put it on the counter the night before with a sticky note that said eat me or something like that. Try to be, you know, make it playful. And I might even put it into their hand in the morning and say, okay, we're taking this before we get in the car to go to school. I would set them up for success. So that's what we need to do for ourselves. And I wouldn't say, okay, ready? We're going to do all the things now. You're going to floss your teeth. A lot of kids don't floss. A lot of adults don't floss, by the way. You're going to floss your teeth now. You're going to take your iron supplement now. You're going to go sit in the sun for 10 minutes every morning and every night because you're supposed to do that. You're not going to look at your tablet or your phone or whatever it is before bed. You're going to move your body throughout the day. You're going to eat this many carbohydrates and this many grams of protein. Aren't you excited? They'd be like, this is way too much. No, thank you. We start with one and we'd get good at that and add in another. So that's the gentle parenting process that we must do with ourselves. And when that happens, we come back into our body. I am no longer numb your. As you heal by the way, your pain threshold goes down. So things you used to be able to do, you felt like a superhero. You can't do anymore. For me, there was a lot of that because I could, I Could, you know, suffer through basically anything. And now that I'm in my body, I'm like, I actually can't. I cannot do it yesterday. We were filming podcast episodes yesterday, and our goal was to film five. It's kind of a lot. I know it might only seem like five hours, but that could take it nine hours to do. Anyway, we were going to film five. I could have done the last one. I could have found the energy to do it, but I was tired and my brain was really tired and my body was really tired. And if I asked my body what it wanted to do, it was like, I just need to go lay down right now. So instead of pushing beyond, I said no. And that tending ourselves is what starts to happen. And the more we do that, the more we see there's actually a great benefit to that in that internal listening. We become more productive when we do that because we're not allowing ourselves to become depleted and malnourished. And it all is about parenting those parts.

[B]

Yeah, that's beautiful. You actually described what I do with my iron supplements and the vitamins. They are literally right in front of where I have my breakfast. And that was the only way I could do it. Otherwise I'd not remember that they're in the cupboard. And yeah, you literally described how I've had to set it up. Up for myself in that very same way. So I resonate with that person. For years, I didn't. I would buy vitamins and just not even take them. And. Yeah, so that process of like, oh, one thing at a time. And yeah, honoring ourselves and. Yeah. Well, thank you, Sarah, for answering those questions in such depth and such wisdom and such. Yeah, deep sharing of your own journey too. I know it helps so many people. Lots of people write in and say how you sharing your journey is so helpful and yeah, really, really has impacted them. So thank you on behalf of all of them and myself.

[A]

Thank you, Rach, so much for that. Thank you for every. To everyone for listening and giving us your time and your heart and your energy. And thank you for sharing your journey too, Rachel. I know it helps people so, so much. So I will see you on our next episode. Enjoying this episode and want to go even deeper into somatic healing. You can join my email community for weekly teachings tools and live events. Click the Show Notes to join.