And since becoming a therapist, I’ve always appreciated Halloween for the way it allows for something I think that’s so important to relational trauma recovery – parts work: letting ourselves try on different “parts” for a night.
What do I mean by this?
Halloween is a very distinct and discrete time of the year when it’s “socially acceptable” for us to bring out one of the many “parts” inside of us by stepping into a costume, a guise, another persona.
Halloween is a time when we’re “allowed” to step into a character that’s probably unlike anything we typically embody in the other 364 days of our year – the witch, the superhero, the seductress, the destructive and evil “bad guy.”
No matter how elaborately or what you dress up as, Halloween allows us an appropriate and safe outlet for creativity, self-expression, and spontaneity — psychologically healthy impulses.
It also allows us to give space and voice to aspects of ourselves that perhaps don’t get a chance to be conscious in other realms of our lives.
Which, in essence, is akin to the therapy tool of “parts work” – an integral part of relational trauma recovery work.
If you’re curious about parts work and what the psychological benefit is when we get to know and then re-integrate disowned and disavowed parts of ourselves again, please read on.
What is Parts Work?
Parts Work – specifically getting to know the disowned and disavowed parts of us and then actively working to reclaim and integrate them into our conscious adult lives – is a critical skill we build in relational trauma recovery work.
But what exactly is Parts Work?
Parts Work is a way of thinking that has roots and genesis in many schools of thought: Gestalt Therapy, Internal Family Systems, Voice Dialogue, and even Jungian Archetypal work.
While each school of thought has its own methodology, Parts Work, as I define it and use it in my therapy room and in my online courses, is a therapeutic lens that assumes that each of us has many different parts to our minds and psyches.
Each of these parts (or subpersonalities) has unique needs, wants, and beliefs and may be conscious or unconsciously playing out helping or harming us as we move through our days encountering different situations, triggers, and scenarios.
