#feels sus
Having done IFS with people diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, I’ve often found myself talking directly to one of their parts across multiple sessions. As I did that, the part would start talking about its parts, and I eventually learned that the part had a Self, as well. At first, this was mind-blowing! Parts having parts? But after I calmed down, it made a kind of aesthetic or spiritual sense that we would have parallel or isomorphic (same form) systems at every level. It’s like those Russian stacking dolls—similar systems embedded within bigger systems. Another analogy would be fractals. While it was disconcerting at first, there’s something beautiful about this nested, parallel systems phenomenon for me, although I don’t know how far it goes. I’ve actually worked with subparts of a part and came to find that it had parts too. As I said before, I’ve come to see parts as sacred beings. They contain their own Self and they’re worthy of the love and compassion of your Self.
Richard Schwartz, No Bad Parts
