Embrace the Parts of Yourself that Carry Your Pain

People generally prefer some aspects of Self over others. You may be proud of your ability to learn new things quickly, and embarrassed that you struggle to remember all the things you’ve learned. You may appreciate your willingness to help other people, yet feel frustrated with a pattern of letting other people take more than you really have to give. You may not particularly like your anger, impulsivity, emotional vulnerability, etc. We often push away those parts of Self that we perceive as troublesome or unlikable. Over time, this internal preference for some aspects of Self over others can harm us more than it helps.

An important step for many people in trauma recovery involves embracing those parts of Self that seem most problematic. These are often the parts that carry our pain. The kind of embrace that I’m talking about occurs naturally and intuitively as we move along the path to recovery. It’s an invitation without expectation. It’s an embrace that feels entirely welcome, warm, and comfortable.

How do we move from disliking to embracing various parts of Self? There’s no one right answer, but it often begins with appreciating that every part of Self thinks, acts, and feels how it does for good reason. Somewhere along the line, every ego state developed a way of responding that offered something helpful. As we change and our lives change, what was helpful before may no longer be helpful now. The potential for every part of Self to be helpful again is always there. And since every part of Self together makes up who you are as a whole person, doesn’t it just make sense to decide that every part of you is already good in some way? As adults, we can decide whether or not to maintain relationships with most other people.  We have no choice but to be in relationship with the various ego states that live inside of us. It’s really just a question of how functional or dysfunctional those internal relationships are going to be.

Getting to the point of actually being able to embrace the parts of ourselves that carry our pain takes persistence, internal validation, accountability, curiosity, faith, compassion, courage. Basically, whatever characteristics we already like about ourselves need to be turned inward. We need to be committed to putting the time and energy into coming to understand and appreciate those parts of Self that we don’t like so much yet. We can continue to work toward changing the things about ourselves that are problematic or distressing in some way, and approach this change through improving our relationship with Self rather than judging or dismissing aspects of Self.

The more we embrace every part of Self, the easier it is to move through life with balance, poise, strength, and wisdom. And just like in relationships with people outside of ourselves, the more we want and try to know, understand, and get along with every part of Self, the easier it becomes to do so.