Fleshing Out Parts—Understanding Their Roles
Week 5: Flesh Out and Feel: Deepening Connection to Parts
Welcome to Week 5 of our Self-Led Recovery journey. We’ve spent the past four weeks learning how to identify, focus on, and build trust with our inner parts while cultivating the 8Cs of Self-energy. This week, we take a closer look at each part’s role in our system, along with the “burdens” they carry. By fleshing out our parts with curiosity and compassion, we create a deeper, more meaningful connection that supports lasting healing.
Fleshing Out Our Parts: Why It Matters
In Internal Family Systems (IFS), “fleshing out” a part means exploring not only its surface-level behaviors but also the beliefs and burdens driving it. According to Richard Schwartz in No Bad Parts, a “burden” can be any painful belief, emotion, or memory a part took on—often as a way to protect the rest of the system.
When we flesh out a part, we move beyond the immediate reaction (e.g., anger, anxiety, procrastination) and ask: “What is this part’s job, and what is it protecting me from?” This process helps us see our parts as valuable allies, each with its own story and motivation. Rather than shaming or trying to eliminate a part, we bring compassionate curiosity to understand why it does what it does.
Practical Exercise: Journaling About a Part’s Role
Choose one part you’ve noticed lately—maybe it’s a critical part, an anxious part, or a people-pleasing part. Open your journal and explore the following prompts:
Role in the System
What do I believe this part is trying to accomplish or protect me from?
How does it usually show up in my thoughts, emotions, or behaviors?
Protective Function
Has this part helped me cope with difficult situations in the past?
What does it fear would happen if it didn’t do its job?
Identifying Burdens
What heavy beliefs, stories, or emotions might this part be carrying?
Are these burdens from past experiences, childhood, or learned patterns?
As you journal, remember that parts often adopt extreme roles when they feel they must protect you at all costs. By fleshing out these details, you begin to see the world from the part’s perspective—an essential step toward healing.
Putting It All Together
This exercise may stir up insights or even uncomfortable emotions. That’s normal. Try to remain rooted in . If you start feeling overwhelmed, pause, take a few breaths, and remind yourself that all parts (even the most troublesome) carry some form of wisdom or protective intent.
Looking Ahead
On Wednesday, we’ll delve into the next step: learning how to feel our parts’ emotions without being overwhelmed. Bringing Self-energy to intense emotional experiences allows you to stay present and supportive, rather than pushing uncomfortable feelings away. This is how you continue building a trusting relationship with your parts—one that’s grounded in empathy and understanding.
Fleshing out a parts job… I realize this is probably not what you had in mind, but… this can be a particularly difficult practice to live out when in a physically paralyzed body.
When I can’t mobilize and move my legs, my hips, my abdomen… nor “feel” them… what is their job?! When uncontrollable nerve spasticity in those parts beat the living body with no ability to “fight back”, less risking further self-harm… what is those parts job?
To pause and breath… after 30 years, the language of listening reveals deeper answers then just the normality of touch senses or mobile functionality. The legs still provide circulation that controls proper blood pressure. Stability in whole body movements such as transfers to and from a wheelchair. Spasticity becomes a language of the body saying something’s wrong and position needs to change. Attention needs to be given in investigation both to external condition (skin, bone, contact points, etc.) and internal functions (bowel, bladder, circulation, etc.).
Understanding a body parts job extends beyond the traditional world’s expectations of role in a life of disability. Perhaps the same imaginative awareness applies beyond just a “disabled” definition, too.