As I continue to write posts about working with child parts, I want to encourage you to think about this topic as well. Read the following questions, and be honest with yourself – think about them. Journal about them, and make these questions the topics of discussion in your internal meetings. Try the acronym exercises if you need a starting place.
- What are your beliefs about child parts? Who are they? What are they? Why do you have child parts?
- What are your healing and therapy goals for working with your child parts?
- Do you want your child parts to grow older? Or are you happy to incorporate them into your life at whatever age they are?
- Would you feel better if your child parts grew up? What would you lose if they got older? What would you gain?
- Do you remember the same things the child parts remember? If not, do you believe them? Why or why not? Do you understand why they might have different memories than you?
- Do you know how to comfort, soothe, and protect your child parts in safe and healthy ways? List out viable options. Examine various barriers causing complications and troubles for you.
- Can you sit near your child parts without hurting them, and without having any unhealthy or destructive internal struggles? If not, do you know what gets in the way of this happening or how to address the issues? If so, are you able to hold their hand or let them sit with you in a safe and comforting way?
- Do any of your child parts bring joy, laughter, and smiles to your life? How so?
- Do any of your child parts carry your pain? Your emotions? Your trauma memories? If so, what are you doing to address those issues?
- Are you actively involved in aggressively protecting your child parts from anyone inside or outside that will hurt them? Why or why not? What are you doing that is effective? Where do you need help?
Working with child parts is a complicated and critical part of the therapy for trauma survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Your approach to your kids, your values and your beliefs about the kids will affect how you do your work with them.
Is your approach effective?
If you were the child, would you want to interact with you?
Give your inside kids the best of what you’ve got. Give your kids the depths of what they need. Learn healthy ways to provide for and overcome the years of neglect and abuse they endured. Let your kids have Corrective Emotional Experiences!! They deserve oodles and gobs of kindness, comfort, appreciation, and understanding for the hard stuff they endured for you.
Help them to heal their hurts, and to feel the true beauty of being a child.
Remember, as your inside children can feel good, you can feel good. As long as they feel alone and stuck in their trauma, so will you.
Healing is a team effort! Work together, help each other, and then EVERYONE gets to move out of the terrible trauma spots and into a happier, safer, prettier, calmer place in life.
Warmly,
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2018 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation
I am still even acknowledging there are child parts….so I am trying to look all this information up….youngsters “scare” me for some reason….even in the natural – I don’t have any and am not around them very much….I don’t know why I am so afraid of them…..maybe because most of the young ones I “sense” inside are those that cry, or wail, or are “frozen”…..and I don’t know why they are doing that….so it makes it hard to “look at” them…….
Although there is one that I am more comfortable with…..one who absolutely LOVES ice cream…..when that one bubbles up there is an obvious outward transformation….I knew that I “felt” different, but people started commenting on how fidgety I was, my whole focus was on the ice cream, and my Outside toes would literally non-stop bounce up and down the whole time I ate it (a little weird for a 30-something year old at the time – and I STILL feel it at 63!)……Anyway, there got to be so many comments that I ended up being afraid or ashamed to eat ice cream around anyone…..I didn’t know what was happening…..I just knew that I felt SO, SO excited…..all was right with the world the few moments I ate ice cream……so I just started eating it at home around my husband…..but when he started commenting on how much I could consume (I could out-eat him in a heartbeat and he is a big guy – I am on the small side!) – I backed off buying it at all…..I still sense the “longing” inside though…….
I guess I will have to either eat it totally alone or figure out how to “control” my actions and the amount I can eat…(which would create some frustration for that part)…maybe I can get “brave enough” to catch more glimpses of some of the others….an interesting journey!
It’s getting better. Not where I want it to be.. But better.
My problem has been shutting out insiders completely. Not trusting them.. And not trusting myself.
There used to be a belief that play was a “bad thing” and I wouldn’t allow it. No way.. Not in an adult body. That’s changing.
As a special needs professional, I now allow my “kids” to play, interact, and have fun with the children I deal with. I can now (a little bit and still growing) be in that moment with my inner kids. Something that was once “bad” is turning around.
You might be surprised, Kathy, that the special needs kids I work with along with my mentally challenged daughter can quickly see me switch. I often get remarks from them: You weren’t here the other day. I had fun with MIkey. (My most playful insider).
It’s been interesting and not scary to be present with them. Oh yes.. I still completely loose time with them. It is more than ok for the insiders to play with my kids I work with.
Would I want my inside kids to grow older? The answer to that is no way. Not if that means loosing this expierience. No, I want my inside kids… Just the way they are.
I want less hurt for some of them.
I am working very hard to bridge a gap!!!!
Do you still have a office? Are you still practicing? Do you still see clients? You said you “used to” have this picture? What happened to it? we googled you and a lot of your sites are gone and can’t be accessed anymore…..just curious.
What if you hate your child parts and they hate you, too?
Theyre busy playing xbox games and reading new books right now, and going places like the Christmas warehouse, and looking at Christmas lights.
Do you have any good ideas to share?
Your thoughts and comments are welcomed. 🙂
Kathy
Kathy
We help make cookies and fudge and we make Christmas presents also . This year we have made 12 no sew fringed scarves 2 Quilted cow wall hangings 2 red trucks with Christmas tree in the back of truck wall hangings Styrofoam snowman ornament star ornaments and some other ones. But wait do Bany and I count as a inside kid or know because we are out and about a lot
Reblogged this on Discussing Dissociation and commented:
Hello Everyone,
Are your inside kids running around, being particularly visible during the holiday season?
While your little ones are nearby, have a little think about how you can use this time to advance their healing.
What are you doing with your kids?
Here are some ideas to consider.
Warmly,
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2014 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation
Hey Kathy,
I love this stuff. I can answer some of the questions and I can think about the rest and I’m still excited about the work ahead of me.
It would be interesting sometime to know your thoughts on what types of exercises a client can do between sessions to help themselves.
Obviously in an ideal world all work would be part of an integrated process with a specialist therapist but for those who may find themselves either not able to work with a specialist or perhaps working with parts that are uncooperative except outside of session, it might be useful to have some ideas for stand-alone exercises that might work as a kind of “tool box” to help get extra work done whenever the opportunity arises.
Does this make sense?
Thanks as always
BTC.x
AS well as questions for different ages, questions for like lights or darks, non-humans, and other peoples could be cool too.
Good questions Kathy, really getting us thinking!
Hi Gobbies —
Well, I’ve got at least a million more questions I could post… 😀
Sounds like a good plan to me!
Kathy
Greetings Kathy,
I actually wrote a response to this early this morning – but managed to get knocked offline as I attempted to send it – this time I am copy pasteing from email!
I am So Glad you posted again on the blog!
I have been learning a lot from how many thoughts, and emotions I experience when I read these questions. I immediately copy pasted them into an email for my T, and printed him a copy – but he had already printed them out when I arrived today – wow cool!
These questions are already helping us reach much deeper levels of layers of internal, and unexpected responses. Really helpful, and I am already realizing that these questions will take time, and need to be returned to again and again, because the responses are not static, and are already inviting reevaluation and reconsideration.
I truly appreciate these, and am wondering if at some future posting you could also consider what sorts of differences questions for tweens, teens, adults, older parts? I would be really interested in what insights you might have in working with these as well.
Many Many Thanks, Dollswise
Hi Dollswise,
Oh wow! So your therapist is finding my blog posts helpful too?!! lol. YAY. 🙂
Yes, there is a lot more to DID work than just asking about trauma. Examining the resistances / blockages / walls between one part to another, no matter which direction you look — between any two parts in your system — are extremely important areas of work. Build the connections, and look for the issues that prevent connections between parts. That work alone will help you make a lot of progress overall.
Keep up the good work!
Kathy