Parts Work Therapy
Have you ever felt like part of you wants to move forward — and another part is holding on for dear life? Or found yourself saying “I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I can’t seem to stop”? That’s not a character flaw or a lack of willpower. They are parts of you that develop in moments of necessity and survival.
We are all made up of many parts — inner voices, feelings, and ways of being that developed over time in response to our experiences. Parts work is the process of actually getting to know those parts: what they need, what they're protecting, and how to help them work together instead of constantly pulling in different directions.
What is Parts Work?
Parts work is a broad term for a family of therapeutic approaches that understand the mind as made up of distinct internal parts or sub-personalities — each with its own perspective, feelings, and role in your inner system. Rather than trying to eliminate or override difficult emotions or behaviors, parts work gets curious about them. What is this part protecting? What does it need? What would it do if it felt safe enough to let go?
In my practice, I draw from several evidence-informed models — including Internal Family Systems (IFS), ego state therapy, and EMDR’s own parts-based framework — weaving them together in a way that fits each person I work with. The specific model matters less than the underlying principle: every part of you developed for a reason, and every part deserves to be understood.
Fear of Losing Yourself
One of the things I hear most often when clients are starting parts work is the fear that reaching their therapy goals means losing a part of themselves they've always known. Usually it's a protective part — one that's kept them safe, pushed them to succeed, or helped them survive something genuinely hard. The thought of letting that part go can feel scary, even when that same part is also causing a lot of pain.
That fear makes total sense. And it's also based on a misunderstanding of what this work actually is.
Parts work doesn't ask you to get rid of anything. It asks you to get to know your parts well enough that they don't have to work quite so hard anymore. The part that learned to protect you from feeling unworthy doesn't disappear — it gets to rest. It gets to update. It gets to find out you have a lot more resources now than you did back when it first took that job on.
No part gets left behind here. I don't say that just to be reassuring — it’s the actual orientation of this work.
How Parts Work and Embodied EMDR Fit Together
In my practice, parts work and Embodied EMDR are pretty much inseparable. They developed alongside each other in how I actually work with people, and each one makes the other more effective.
EMDR is powerful for reprocessing memories — but those memories don't exist in a vacuum. They're held by parts. A part that learned early on that vulnerability wasn't safe might resist the processing entirely. A protective part might step in and shut things down right when we're getting somewhere. When we actually work with those parts directly — getting their buy-in, hearing their concerns, making sure they feel included instead of pushed past — the EMDR tends to move more smoothly, and what shifts tends to actually stick.
The body is a huge piece of this too. We pay attention to where parts physically show up — the tightness in your chest that means a protective part just stepped forward, the heaviness in your shoulders that's been carrying something for a long time, the lightness that shows up when a part finally feels heard. Bringing the body into parts work gets us to places that staying purely cognitive just can't reach.
Together, this combination doesn't just help you understand your patterns intellectually — it helps you actually feel them shift.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Parts work woven into Embodied EMDR isn’t a rigid protocol — it’s a way of paying attention. In practice it might look like:
Noticing when a part shows up during a session — a sudden urge to change the subject, a wave of shame, an impulse to minimize — and getting curious about it rather than pushing through
Taking time to acknowledge and work with protective parts before moving into deeper trauma processing, so they feel included rather than bypassed
Helping parts update their understanding of who you are now — an adult with more resources, more support, and more capacity than you had when those parts first formed
Noticing where parts live in the body and using movement and somatic awareness to help them feel heard at a physical level, not just a cognitive one
This work moves at your pace. There is no forcing, no bypassing, no part of you that gets left behind.