Effective Emotional Self-Care: A Body-Centered Parts Work Process
The Importance of Effective Emotional Self-Care
In the world of emotions, there are often 2 extremes.
We either feel too much and are flooded with overwhelming emotions we don’t know what to do with.
Or we try to numb, suppress, avoid, and deny our emotions. This approach creates more tension and stress in our minds and bodies. Plus, when our emotions are shoved, unwanted, in our subconscious, they grow bigger and more confusing.
In order to step out of those uncomfortable and ineffective extremes, we need a way to connect with and tend to our emotional inner world in a supportive and healing way.
This body-centered parts work process in today’s episode is just that.
In this Body-Centered Parts Work Process for Effective Emotional Self-Care, I walk you through a simple, repeatable process that can help you understand and care for your emotions in a graceful and effective way.
This process will introduce you to a paradigm of emotional self-care rooted in compassion and acceptance that will help you have greater insight into the inner workings of your emotions as you learn to process them more deeply.
Try the Body-Centered Parts Work Process for Effective Emotional Self-Care now!
Episode timing:
00:00 - The Importance of Effective Emotional Self-Care
03:13 - Body-Centered Parts Works Process Step 1: Feel Your Emotions in Your Body
11:18 - Body-Centered Parts Works Process Step 2: Important Understandings About This Part
13:52 - Body-Centered Parts Works Process Step 3: 3 Essential Questions to Go Deeper
20:34 - Conclusion
Other episodes mentioned:
Episode 004: Calm Down When Triggered (A Havening® Exercise for Emotional Well-Being)
Episode 005: How To Heal Your Emotional Triggers (At The Roots)
Body-Centered Parts Work Process
Step 1: Feel Your Emotions in Your Body
Bring to mind an emotion or situation you want to get more healing and clarity about during this parts work process.
As you bring it to mind, your body will have a reaction. This reaction could be something like tension, constriction, contraction, or numbness. You may notice a change in your posture or your breath. Or you may feel discomfort, pain, or numbness.
Notice where you feel this reaction the most. Is it more on the left or the right? Is it more deep or superficial? How big is it? Notice the height, width, thickness, and shape of this reaction in your body. Does it have a color or a texture? What else do you notice about it?
Now, identify this reaction in your body as the part of you that’s carrying this emotion. For example, if you’re working with the feeling of overwhelm, you’re going to call this reaction in your body “your overwhelmed part”.
Why this body-centered processing is so important:
This step is incredibly important because it helps us be less flooded when we identify that a part of us is carrying that emotion instead of believing that we are that emotion or us feeling overtaken by that emotion.
Also, feeling and sensing this emotion in your body and noticing the color, shape, etc. gives this feeling edges and boundaries that can help it feel more contained and less overwhelming and out of control.
Plus, if you notice colors, textures, shapes, or images associated with this feeling, they are not random. Our subconscious doesn’t have access to words, so it speaks to us in symbols, feelings, metaphors, colors, and shapes. So, just like a picture is worth a thousand words, this can help you connect more deeply with the symbolic wisdom of your subconscious and deepen your understanding of what’s really going on deep inside you.
Step 2: Important Understandings About This Part
Here are 3 assumptions we’re going to make about this part to understand it more deeply and create more self-compassion.
This part is carrying this emotion for a reason.
If it could have let go of this emotion already, it would have.
This part of you deserves compassion, love, and support.
See how pondering these assumptions feels to you.
How do these assumptions affect how you feel about this part and how you approach it?
Step 3: 3 Questions to go deeper
These 3 questions can help you more deeply understand this part of you:
What if it makes total sense that this part feels this way right now?
What would it be like to have compassion for this part right now?
What does this part want or need to feel loved and supported right now?
Notice how these questions feel to you as well as any answers you get about what this part wants or needs.
Sometimes our parts will very clearly tell us how they are feeling and what they need. But, sometimes they won’t express much, in which case this parts work process is more about creating a safe and compassionate relationship with this part.
Notice what else wants to be known about this part. Listen to the impulses of your body and heart and notice if anything else wants to happen between you and this part.
Stay here in step 3 for as long as feels supportive.
When our parts feel seen, heard, accepted, and supported by us, they can naturally let go of the emotional burdens that they’ve been carrying which results in relief and deep shifts in our emotions.
This episode is brought to you by The Co-Regulation Community!
I created The Co-Regulation Community so you can soothe your stress on a deep body level, while also rewiring your nervous system for more authenticity, resilience, and peace.
Join The Co-Regulation Community now to:
Release habituated patterns of stress, anxiety, and overwhelm - while cultivating new, healthier patterns deep in your nervous system.
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How did that Body-Centered Parts Work Process for Effective Emotional Self-Care feel to you?
What do you understand about your emotions now that you didn’t understand before? What’s shifted within you?
Please let me know in the comments!
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And please join me every Friday on this beautiful journey out of your head, and into your more embodied and authentic self.
I’m so happy you joined me today!
About me
Hi there, I’m Karena!
I’m a trauma-informed emotional healing coach here to help you quickly identify and heal the subconscious blocks, old emotional wounds, and self-sabotaging core beliefs that are holding you back!
Want to go deeper? Join me in the Co-Regulation Community!
Are you ready to find your center, quiet your mind and step off the roller coaster of stress, anxiety and overwhelm?