Parts jordanmarsh6, November 2, 2021April 5, 2023 My mom is a pretty incredible person. At 65 years young she decided she wanted to get a master’s degree in Social Work and become a counselor. She’s currently taking online classes at a well-known university and working as an intern at a therapy company. The therapy company she works for basically has had her seeing patients from the start, when she felt like she didn’t really know much. She calls it being thrown into the fire. At first she had to rely largely on her own intuition (which I think is equivalent to a master’s degree in therapy unto itself) but that she has been rapidly trying to learn techniques to help the patients she sees. She told me recently about a counseling technique that she calls “parts”. The basic idea of “parts” is that there are different parts of us; they act as alter-egos in a way that collect to define who we are. For example, my parts may include lazy Jordan, motivated Jordan, child Jordan, extrovert Jordan, and many others. Rather than letting a particular day of laziness completely define your whole self as lazy, you can chalk up that day to being dominated by the lazy version of yourself. Rather than misinterpreting one day of not really wanting to socialize with others as being proof of your DNA-rooted introverted personality trait, perhaps your introverted self just wanted some space that day. My mom told me about one of her patients who she has helped to identify the different versions of himself. In one really telling story, she said that he told her his “child self” would be so angry with his “current addicted self” because his child self would tell the current addicted self that he is not nearly having enough fun. How cool is that? I’m sure my “child self” thinks the same thing of me too. This is a powerful way to compartmentalize your personality, and help you realize that you don’t have to be defined by any one of your parts. I think there are periods of time where lazy Jordan dominates more of my other “parts”, and I tend to get really frustrated with myself. A large reason I decided to start this blog was because of a simple, but sad, experience: I had an idea, got excited about it, then immediately told myself that I probably wouldn’t follow through on it because I never seem to follow through well on any of my ideas. In a way, I was letting one “part” of myself define the collective whole of myself and that compounded to the point where I was almost hopeless. As far as healthy thinking goes, I think it’s invaluable to remember that you have many different “parts” and that from time to time the less desirable parts might be more evident in your life. The trick is doing what we can to minimize those less desirable parts and maximize the more desirable ones. Self Improvement