Cultivating Mindful Self Compassion

You just aren’t good at relationships… it is probably better to just be alone for the rest of your life.

Yes, you hate your job, but you probably won’t find a better one.

No one will listen to you, even if you speak up.

We all have inner protective parts.

Do you resonate with any of these messages? Throughout the day, are you aware of the protective thoughts that occur in your mind?

Children, especially highly sensitive children, often learn very intelligent ways to protect themselves when circumstances or people become overwhelming. To survive and feel accepted in family and community, humans develop various inner parts or subpersonalities that are self-protective.

Subpersonality is a concept developed by the Italian Psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli that defines our “inner” family members. Our various subpersonalities have different names and roles such as the victim, the rebel, or the critic.

Subpersonalities can become especially loud when your soul longs to create and express from your highest self.   

For example, when I began writing this, I had a subpersonality that began talking to me. I was sitting at my desk, stumbling with expressing thoughts on paper, and my inner escapist said, “Caroline, what is the point of writing? No one will probably ever read what you are saying anyway.” I hesitated and then paused. I then thought, “Hmmm. Should I just quit and instead make a cup of tea?”

My true, passionate, creative self desired to write; however, I almost made a choice from another part of myself that desired to protect me from the underlying fear that arises when beginning a writing project. 

Subpersonalities are developed as strategies to feel safe as children.

No matter if someone is from a loving and adoring family or if a person has had a much more challenging family environment, humans learn individual ways of coping with painful feelings and situations through developing subpersonalities.

Although your subpersonalities can block you sometimes from your highest guidance, they often have protected you from feeling underlying fear, sadness, and anger that was perhaps too painful to feel as children. However, as an integrated adult you can learn how to mindfully engage with your subpersonalities in order to be in the driver’s seat of your life instead of allowing your defenses to take the wheel.  

You can befriend your inner protective parts to feel more integrated and whole.  

When you begin to recognize and uncover your subpersonalities, a natural reaction is to just get angry at yourself and try to ignore or push these parts away.  

Sometimes it can be helpful to have an internal boundary like a boundary you would have with another human being with an inner protective part. However, befriending and holding compassion for your protective parts can provide greater insight into what these personalities are trying to communicate or what they might need.

In the example of me writing this, instead of giving up on writing or telling my inner escapist to just shut up and leave me alone, I began to remember that as a kid I often needed extra encouragement to finish tasks.

When I was young, I received a message from my community that girls weren’t as talented or as smart as the boys, so I could easily give up on a project and assume myself to not be capable.

So, sitting in front of the computer, I comforted my inner escapist. I said, “Caroline, I understand why you want to run away from this, but I think you’ve got this. Just keep trying. I’ll also get you a cup of tea to drink while you write.”