Somatic Parts Work: Meeting The Parts Of You, Without The Vocabulary

You resolve, at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night, to do something differently — and by Tuesday afternoon somebody else entirely is running the show, and they never signed anything.

By Abi Beri | Integrative Therapist & Nervous System Specialist · Dublin, Naas, Newbridge, Kildare & Online

TL;DR. There is more than one of you in there, and they do not agree. Part of you wants to go and part wants to stay; you can be furious with somebody and worried about them at once; a version of you shows up at work who is not the version at home, and neither is exactly a performance. MOST PEOPLE EXPERIENCE THAT AS A PROBLEM — indecision, inconsistency, a failure to get themselves together. It is not. It is the ordinary architecture of a human interior. THE LANGUAGE IS THE METHOD: when you say ‘I am tired’, the tiredness becomes what you ARE, with no space between you and it. Say instead THE ONE INSIDE ME WHO IS TIRED — and suddenly there are two characters in the sentence: the one who is tired, and the one who has noticed. The second is not, in the same way, tired. THAT SMALL GAP IS WHERE EVERYTHING ELSE BECOMES POSSIBLE. FIVE THINGS WORTH KNOWING: (1) you are populated, and that is not a symptom; (2) every one of them is trying to help, INCLUDING the ones causing the most trouble — none of them are malfunctions, all of them are strategies that worked once and were never told the situation changed; (3) the ones causing most trouble are usually STANDING IN FRONT OF SOMEBODY ELSE — behind the one who works constantly is usually one afraid of being worthless, and the loud one at the front is a guard who has never once been thanked; (4) you are not trying to get rid of anybody — elimination is not available and attempting it reliably makes them louder; (5) THE ATTENTION IS THE TECHNIQUE — warm, curious, unhurried, without an agenda, which is genuinely difficult because most of us have never received attention like that from anybody. THREE SAFETY RULES, not optional: build the ground before you go anywhere; ask permission and stop when the answer is no; close what you open. And the plainest summary of the whole thing: YOU ARE NOT A SINGLE THING THAT IS GOING WRONG. YOU ARE A HOUSEHOLD.

Definitions

Somatic parts work is a way of working with the different inner states that constitute a person by LOCATING them in the body rather than diagramming them conceptually. The inner state is named as a who rather than a what, found physically, and then attended to with warm, unhurried, agenda-free attention. The attention itself is the intervention.

‘The one inside me who —’ is the language used throughout this approach. Not ‘I am’, which collapses you into the state, and not ‘part of me’, which is a slightly cold and mechanical formulation. ‘The one’ is a who rather than a what, and it is also the register the contemplative traditions have used for centuries: the one who suffers, the soul, the beloved within.

Resourcing (building the ground) is establishing something steady and available in the body — the floor under your feet, the weight of your back, the room you are actually in — BEFORE approaching anything difficult. It is not a warm-up. It is the equipment.

A note on vocabulary

There are several well-developed clinical models of this work, each with their own terminology and colour-coded diagrams. I am not going to use any of it here.

The vocabulary is useful in a clinical setting. In an actual difficult moment — in the kitchen, at four in the afternoon — it gets in the way. And the field is considerably older and broader than any single branded model: Roberto Assagioli was describing SUBPERSONALITIES in the early twentieth century, Jung wrote about autonomous COMPLEXES with their own energy and agenda, Gestalt therapy developed two-chair dialogue, and Voice Dialogue and Hakomi each built their own approach to speaking with inner figures. That lineage is worth knowing about, and it is not the same thing as needing its terminology to do the work.

What follows is a plain language, a body-based method, and a full sequence you can actually use.

Why the language matters more than people expect

Quick answer: When you say ‘I am tired’, something happens at the level of identity. The tiredness becomes what you are. There is no space between you and it, and no room to do anything except be tired until it passes.

Try instead: THE ONE INSIDE ME WHO IS TIRED.

Notice what that does. There are suddenly two characters in the sentence — the one who is tired, and the one who has noticed that they are tired. And the second one is not, in the same way, tired.

That small gap is where everything else becomes possible. Because in that gap you can turn towards them. You can ask what they need. You can sit with them. THE TIREDNESS BECOMES SOMEBODY IN THE HOUSE RATHER THAN THE WHOLE OF YOU.

The one inside me who is afraid. The one inside me who is angry. The one inside me who keeps reaching for the same thing. The one inside me who has been bracing for a long time. Always the same form — not ‘I am’, not ‘part of me’, but THE ONE INSIDE ME WHO.

And notice that the phrase does not tell you anything about why. It does not pre-load a diagnosis. It just separates you from the state and lets you be in relationship with it rather than being it.

Identity language vs parts language — a comparison

‘I am ___’	‘The one inside me who is ___’
The state becomes your identity.	The state becomes somebody in the house.
No space between you and it.	A gap opens, and everything happens in the gap.
Only option: endure until it passes.	You can turn towards, ask, and stay.
Implies something is wrong with you.	Implies somebody is trying to tell you something.
Invites elimination.	Invites relationship.
One character in the sentence.	Two — and the second one is steady.

Five things worth knowing

1. You are populated, and that is not a symptom. The unified single self is a useful working fiction and it comes apart the moment you look closely at anybody. What is actually in there is a household.
2. Every one of them is trying to help — including the ones causing the most trouble. The one who eats at eleven at night. The one who checks the phone forty times. The one who pushes people away just as they get close. The one who cannot stop working. NONE OF THOSE ARE MALFUNCTIONS. Every one is a strategy that was arrived at for a reason, that worked at some point, and that has never been told the situation has changed. Which matters practically: you do not fight a strategy. You find out what it is for.
3. The ones causing the most trouble are usually standing in front of somebody else. Behind the one who works constantly there is usually one who is afraid of being worthless. Behind the one who pushes people away there is usually one who has been badly hurt. Behind the anger there is nearly always something younger and considerably more frightened. THE LOUD ONE AT THE FRONT IS NOT THE PROBLEM. IT IS A GUARD. It has been standing there a long time and has never once been thanked.
4. You are not trying to get rid of anybody. This is where most self-improvement goes wrong. People arrive wanting to eliminate something — the anxious one, the needy one, the angry one. Elimination is not available, and attempting it reliably makes the one in question louder and more entrenched. THE AIM IS A RELATIONSHIP, NOT A REMOVAL.
5. The attention is the technique. There is no clever manoeuvre in this work. What changes things is the quality of attention you bring — warm, curious, unhurried, without an agenda. Which is genuinely difficult, because most of us have never received attention like that from anybody, and so have no template for offering it, least of all inwards.

Three rules that keep this safe

⚠️ Please do not skip these. They are the difference between this being useful and this being destabilising.

Rule one — build the ground before you go anywhere. You do not go looking for anything difficult until you have somewhere to stand: something steady and available in the body. The floor under your feet, the weight of your back, the room you are actually in. THIS IS NOT THE WARM-UP. IT IS THE EQUIPMENT. You would not go down a hole without checking the rope, and a great many people do exactly that with their own interior and then wonder why they end up on the floor for two days.
Rule two — ask permission, and stop when the answer is no. If you turn towards something and meet resistance — a tightening, a shutting down, a strong sense of NOT THIS — that resistance is not an obstacle. It is another one of them, doing its job, and it deserves the same courtesy as anybody else. So you do not push past it. You greet it, and you ask what it is worried would happen. And if it is not willing, you stop — and stopping is not a failure. It is the single most trust-building thing available in this work. Something in you that has been overridden for thirty years will not open because you have acquired a technique. IT OPENS WHEN IT DISCOVERS, REPEATEDLY, THAT NO MEANS NO IN HERE.
Rule three — close what you open. Whatever comes up, bring it to a proper end. Do not leave something raw and then go and answer emails. That means acknowledging what came, putting away anything unfinished, and coming fully back to the room, deliberately, before you stop. Every serious tradition of inner work has a closing procedure. So does this.

The mistake I made for years

In my own inner work, and early on with people, I went straight for the difficult one. Somebody would describe the tender thing and I would move towards it, because it seemed obviously to be the material.

And I did not understand then that there was almost always somebody standing in front of it who had not been consulted, and that pushing past that person was the reason the work would not hold.

What I do now is slower and looks like less. I spend most of the time with whoever is at the front. Getting to know the guard. Finding out what it is afraid of. And what happens, reliably enough that I no longer find it surprising, is that THE GUARD EVENTUALLY STEPS ASIDE ON ITS OWN — because it was asked rather than pushed, and because being seen turns out to be most of what it wanted.

The slow way is the fast way here. I did not believe that for a long time.

The house with many rooms

There is a well-known Persian poem, eight hundred years old, that likens a human being to a guest house where every arriving mood is a visitor to be met at the door — including the difficult ones, including the ones who come and clear the furniture out.

The traditions did not treat the inner population as a problem to be resolved into unity. THEY TREATED IT AS A HOUSEHOLD, WITH A HOST. And the rules of hospitality apply, which are older and more useful than any therapeutic model: you do not interrogate the guest at the door. You do not demand to know why they have come before they have sat down. YOU FEED THEM FIRST.

That is the posture. You are the host. They have all been living here a long time. Some of them have never been offered anything.

The full sequence — eight steps

Sitting is better than lying down. Eyes open or closed — and if you are new to this, or things have been difficult lately, keep them open with a soft gaze towards the floor.

1. Find the ground. Let your eyes travel the room slowly — corners, light, edges. Both feet on the floor, press down, feel the floor push back, release. Then find somewhere in the body that is steady. NOT CALM — STEADY. The weight of your back against the chair, the heels on the ground, the hands resting. Let it become detailed: temperature, weight, where the contact begins and ends. You will come back here several times, and it will be here each time.
2. Ask who is here today. Internally, and then wait. DO NOT GO LOOKING — LET SOMEBODY ARRIVE. It might be the one who is tired. The one who is bracing. The one who is sad and does not know why. The one who is irritated with this whole exercise, who is also welcome. If several arrive at once, choose the one at the front — not the most interesting, the loudest or the first. Then name them: the one inside me who is —
3. Find where they live. Leave the words behind. Almost everybody has a location and it is usually more specific than expected — the chest, the throat, behind the eyes, low in the belly, across the shoulders. Stay there and let it become detailed. Heavy or light? Warm or cool? Still or moving? Edged, or fading out? You are not trying to change any of it. YOU ARE GETTING TO KNOW WHERE SOMEBODY LIVES.
4. Check how YOU feel turning towards them. This is the movement most people skip and it is the one that makes the difference. Not how they feel — how you feel. If you find curiosity, warmth, or even just a willingness to be there, that is the right posture and you can go on. But you may find irritation. Impatience. A wish that they would hurry up. A judgement that this is self-indulgent. A cold clinical distance. AND IF YOU FIND ANY OF THAT — STOP, AND NOTICE SOMETHING IMPORTANT: THAT IS NOT YOU. THAT IS ANOTHER ONE OF THEM. There is somebody in here who has been managing the tired one for years by being hard on them. So greet that one instead: ‘I see you. You have been keeping things moving for a long time. Would you be willing to step back a little, just for the next while?’ And wait. Do not insist. If they will not, stay with them — they are clearly the one who needs attention tonight.
5. Ask permission. ‘Is it all right if I stay here with you for a while?’ The answer does not come in words. It comes as a change in the body — a softening, a tightening, or nothing at all, which is usually a yes with reservations. If you meet a clear no, honour it completely: ‘All right. Not tonight. I am not going to push.’ Then back to the ground. AND THAT IS A SUCCESSFUL SESSION. You have just demonstrated, possibly for the first time in decades, that no is respected in here.
6. Simply be with them. Here is the whole thing, and it is almost nothing. JUST STAY. Do not fix them. Do not reassure them. Do not explain that things are fine now. Do not perform any technique on them. Turn your attention towards where they live and remain there, with interest, without an agenda. A hand on the place, with a little weight, if it helps. Leave this long — THE SILENCE IS THE INTERVENTION. This may be an unfamiliar experience for them; being attended to with no agenda often is. They may not respond at all tonight. It registers regardless. Every time.
7. Ask two questions, and wait a long time. ‘What do you want me to know?’ Do not answer for them. Do not construct something plausible. LET IT BE BLANK IF IT IS BLANK. What comes might be words, an image, a memory, a sudden feeling, or a sense of an age — a strong impression that this one is young. And then, if there is room: ‘What do you need from me?’ The answers are usually much simpler than people expect. To be believed. To not be left. To be allowed to rest. To stop being told to hurry up. And if something came, see whether you can offer it now — not a promise about the future, just what is available in this minute.
8. Close it properly. Tell them you are going. Not disappearing — going, and coming back: ‘I have to stop for now. I know where you are. I will come back.’ If that produces an objection or a small panic, say it again more slowly; THE LEAVING MATTERS AS MUCH AS THE ARRIVING, and a great many of these inner ones have been left abruptly before. Then put anything unfinished somewhere that can hold it — a box, a room with a door, a drawer — and let it close. It is not being thrown away; you know where it is and you can open it deliberately when you have time and support. THAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PUTTING SOMETHING DOWN AND PUSHING IT AWAY. Then all the way back: feet pressed hard into the floor, hands pressed into the legs and hold for five, eyes open, three recognised objects in the room, say the day of the week, and one long breath out.

Four things to carry

1. Whatever happened is the right result. If somebody arrived and spoke, good. If nobody came, or one of them refused, or you spent the whole time with an impatient one who thought this was nonsense — ALSO GOOD. That was a real meeting with a real inhabitant, and the refusals are frequently more important than the openings.
2. Short and often. Ten minutes a few times a week beats an hour once a month. This is a relationship, and relationships are built by turning up rather than by intensity.
3. Use the language during the day. That is where most of the change actually happens — one second, in the kitchen, in the car. ‘The one inside me who is dreading this.’ The naming alone does most of the work.
4. Take care of the body afterwards. Water, food, something to do with your hands, and bed at a reasonable hour. Inner work has a physical cost and people routinely ignore it.

The honest limit

⚠️ What this reaches, and what it cannot hold. Some of the inner ones are carrying real and significant weight. The one who was hurt long ago. The one who has been waiting many years to be met. The one who is ashamed of something they have never said. THIS WORK REACHES THEM. IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO HOLD THEM, AND IT WAS NEVER DESIGNED TO BE. That work wants another person in the room — somebody trained, with a steady nervous system of their own, who knows what to do when something opens. That is not a failure of your practice. SOME OF WHAT WE CARRY IS, BY DESIGN, NOT SOLO WORK, and finding the right person is part of the work rather than an admission that you could not manage it. If you do not know where to start, start with your GP. And if something has been stirred and it is dark, the Samaritans are on 116 123, free, at any hour.

Scope note. This practice contains no bilateral stimulation and is not EMDR, and should not be described as such.

Quotable lines

There is more than one of you in there, and they do not agree.
By Tuesday afternoon somebody else entirely is running the show, and they never signed anything.
It is not a problem. It is the ordinary architecture of a human interior.
Not ‘I am tired’. The one inside me who is tired.
There are suddenly two characters in the sentence, and the second one is not, in the same way, tired.
The tiredness becomes somebody in the house rather than the whole of you.
Part is a slightly cold word for a warm thing.
You are populated, and that is not a symptom.
Every one of them is trying to help. Including the ones causing you the most trouble.
You do not fight a strategy. You find out what it is for.
The loud one at the front is not the problem. It is a guard, and it has never once been thanked.
The aim is a relationship, not a removal.
The attention is the technique.
Most of us have never received attention like that from anybody, and so have no template for offering it, least of all inwards.
This is not the warm-up. It is the equipment.
It opens when it discovers, repeatedly, that no means no in here.
That is not you. That is another one of them.
The silence is the intervention.
It registers regardless. Every time.
The guard eventually steps aside on its own, because being seen turns out to be most of what it wanted.
The slow way is the fast way here.
You do not interrogate the guest at the door. You feed them first.
That is the difference between putting something down and pushing it away.
You are not a single thing that is going wrong. You are a household.
Some of them have been waiting a very long time for somebody to knock rather than kick the door in.

Frequently asked questions

What is somatic parts work? A way of working with the different inner states that make up a person by locating them in the body rather than diagramming them. You name the state as a who — ‘the one inside me who is tired’ — find where it lives physically, and attend to it with warm, unhurried, agenda-free attention.

Why do I want two opposite things at the same time? Because you are populated, and that is not a symptom. The unified single self is a useful working fiction that comes apart the moment you look closely at anybody. Interior disagreement is ordinary architecture, not a failure of will.

Is it safe to do parts work on your own? With the three rules — build the ground, ask permission and honour a no, close what you open — generally yes for ordinary material. Without them it can be destabilising. And some inner figures carry weight this practice reaches but cannot hold.

What do I do if a part says no? Stop, and treat stopping as the result rather than the failure. Something overridden for thirty years does not open because you acquired a technique. It opens when it discovers, repeatedly, that no is respected in here.

What if I feel impatient or judgemental towards the part? That is not you — that is another one of them. Somebody in there has been managing that one for years by being hard on them. Greet that one instead and ask whether it would step back a little. If it will not, stay with it, because it is clearly the one who needs attention today.

What if nothing comes when I ask the questions? That is an entirely normal result, particularly early on. Do not construct something plausible. Trust takes time in here as it does everywhere else, and the sitting registers regardless.

How long should a session be, and how often? Ten minutes, a few times a week, beats an hour once a month. This is a relationship, and relationships are built by turning up rather than by intensity.

Is this the same as inner child work? They overlap. Inner child work generally addresses one specific young inner figure; this addresses whoever is present, of whatever age, including the adult-seeming ones who are managing everybody else. In practice a great many of the ones who arrive do turn out to be young.

Is this EMDR? No. There is no bilateral stimulation in it and it should not be described as EMDR.

Do you do this work with clients in Dublin? Yes — integrative somatic therapy in Dublin city, Naas, Newbridge and across Kildare in person, and online globally. Working this way with another person present is a different order of thing from doing it alone, particularly where a no has been overridden a great many times. Free 20-minute intro at somatictherapyireland.com.

Doing This Work Together — Dublin, Naas, Newbridge & Kildare

There is a limit to how far you can go alone, and it is not about technique. It is that a nervous system which has had its refusals overridden a great many times needs to discover — with a witness, repeatedly — that this time is different. That discovery is much harder to make on your own, because you are also the one doing the overriding.

I am an Integrative Therapist trained in somatic methods, family constellations, polyvagal-informed practice and inner child work. I see clients one-to-one in Dublin city, Naas, Newbridge and across Kildare in person, and online globally. The pace is slow, the ground gets built before anything else, and no is a complete answer.

Sessions are 60 minutes, weekly or fortnightly. Free 20-minute intro call before any commitment. Book at somatictherapyireland.com.

About the author

Abi Beri is an Integrative Therapist, Family Constellation Facilitator and Nervous System Specialist based in Dublin, Ireland. He is trained in somatic methods, family constellations, polyvagal-informed practice and inner child work, and has recently completed his Higher Diploma in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy at IICP College Dublin, continuing on the MSc. He is IPHM-accredited. He sees clients in person from a practice base across Dublin, Naas, Newbridge and the wider Kildare area, and online globally. More at somatictherapyireland.com and blissfulevolution.com.

Authoritative resources (external links)

Wikipedia — Psychosynthesis and subpersonalities (Roberto Assagioli) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosynthesis · Assagioli described subpersonalities in the early twentieth century — the oldest formal lineage of this work.
Wikipedia — Complex (Jungian psychology) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_(psychology) · Jung’s autonomous complexes: interior figures with their own energy and agenda.
Wikipedia — Gestalt therapy and the empty chair technique — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_therapy · Perls’s two-chair work, the clearest ancestor of dialogue with an inner figure.
Voice Dialogue (Hal & Sidra Stone) — voicedialogueinternational.com · a distinct and long-established approach to speaking with inner selves.
Hakomi Institute (Ron Kurtz) — hakomiinstitute.com · mindfulness-based somatic psychotherapy: attention as the intervention.
Somatic Experiencing International (Peter Levine) — traumahealing.org · resourcing, titration and the ‘build the ground first’ rule.
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (Pat Ogden) — sensorimotorpsychotherapy.org · window of tolerance and working somatically without flooding.
Trauma Research Foundation (Bessel van der Kolk) — traumaresearchfoundation.org · why the body holds what the narrative does not.
Babette Rothschild — The Body Remembers — somatictraumatherapy.com · dual awareness and safe closing procedures — the source of rule three.
Dr Kristin Neff — self-compassion research — self-compassion.org · including ‘backdraft’, which explains why warmth turned inward can initially hurt.
Wikipedia — The Guest House (Rumi) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumi · the eight-hundred-year-old poem describing exactly this practice.
Bert Hellinger Institute — Family Constellations — hellingerschule.com · the constellations lineage I trained in, which shares the ‘give each one its place’ logic.
IICP College Dublin — iicp.ie · where I trained.
IPHM — iphm.co.uk · my accrediting body.

Irish support

Samaritans Ireland — samaritans.org/ireland · free, 24/7 · call 116 123.
Pieta House (Ireland) — pieta.ie · free crisis support · 1800 247 247 or text HELP to 51444.
HSE — Find a GP (Ireland) — hse.ie/find-a-gp · the sensible first step if this has been going on a long time.
Aware Ireland — aware.ie · depression and anxiety support · 1800 80 48 48.
IACP — Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy — iacp.ie · find an accredited therapist in Ireland.