Therapy

Befriending the Child Inside

Connecting with and healing the young parts inside you can be transformative.

Posted April 27, 2026

When I first meet a new client, I often need to socialise them to the idea that our mind is comprised of many different parts. This idea, called "multiplicity of self,"¹ is a big paradigm shift for most people. We tend to think of ourselves as a singular self, meaning, I am just "Dan." And of course, I am Dan. That’s my name, what everyone calls me, how I sign off my emails.

But the big paradigm shift is to understand that, instead of being "Dan," I am made up of many "parts of Dan." Although this idea has become associated with internal family systems (IFS), because it’s one of the fastest-growing and most popular therapy models right now, it’s not unique to IFS. Schema therapy, compassion-focused therapy, dialectical behaviour therapy, Gestalt therapy, transactional analysis, and many more are, in their different ways, parts-based approaches to healing.

But in this post, I will focus on IFS, because it’s my favourite of these models and makes the most sense to me, clinically, in understanding how this multiplicity works. In IFS, you have two main categories of parts: "exiles," which are the hurt young parts of you, holding painful memories, thoughts, beliefs, and experiences from key stages of your childhood. And you have "protectors," whose job it is to make sure you never get hurt again in the same way.

If you haven’t come across these ideas before, they may sound a bit out there, but it’s actually common sense. I understand parts as neural networks in your brain, holding certain types of information. This is just how the brain works, because although there are certain structures and regions in the brain with specialised functions, most neurological work is done by networks of neurons firing together.

Parts get stuck in space and time

Let’s make this concrete through Deborah’s story. She came to see me because romantic relationships were deeply unsatisfying. She struggled to trust and was irrationally jealous and hypersensitive to any sign of men becoming bored or pulling away. During our early sessions, I helped her see that one of her neural networks was holding all the information related to her first—agonising—heartbreak, at 13. She got dumped by Michael, whom she loved with the passion we feel for our first teenage crush. When he left Deborah for the prettiest and most popular girl in their class, dumping her in a public, humiliating way, it shattered her poor teenage heart into a million pieces.

These kinds of highly painful experiences are seared into our memory, so everything about that time still feels uncomfortably fresh and vivid to Deborah, even 30 years later. That’s because there’s a neural network holding all the information about the breakup and agonising days, weeks, and months that followed—her 13th year felt like a car crash. Viewed through an IFS lens, Deborah now has a 13-year-old girl living in her mind, who hasn’t moved on at all. She is still a gawky teenager, stuck in her old school, reliving those awful experiences over and over.

But why does this network feel like a person to her? Because that’s what the brain does, all the time—it personifies your experience to create the you that you understand yourself to be. Looping back to my experience of moving through the world as me, what does that mean? What actually is "Dan"? It’s not solid in any way, like the aluminium-and-plastic keyboard I’m typing on or the wooden desk supporting it. "Dan" is a creation of my brain, formed of every thought, feeling, experience, memory, value, opinion, and desire I have ever had. So it is with Deborah’s 13-year-old self—she is a personified creation of her brain.

Wounded parts can be healed

One of the wonderful things about IFS is that parts like Deborah’s heartbroken teenager can be healed. In fact, when we started parts work together, we moved through what Richard Schwartz, founder of IFS, calls the "healing steps." We first identified the part, then connected with her inside, making sure Deborah felt at least curious about her, but hopefully warm-hearted and compassionate (this told us that Deborah’s Self, her loving, adult resource, was online).

Deborah then heard her sad story, in as much detail as her 13-year-old self needed to tell her. When she was done, Deborah went back to the school, in her mind, told off Michael for being selfish and mean, then comforted her teenage part with hugs and reassuring words. She then rescued the part, bringing her out of that horrible place and time to come and live in Deborah’s apartment in the present day. This "retrieval" helps to update the memory, so it becomes an event that happened a long time ago, rather than something that feels recent and raw.

I then guided Deborah in helping this part release all her painful thoughts and feelings, burning them in a big bonfire on a wild and windy beach. It doesn’t always happen this way, but this "unburdening" step can be transformative—and her teenage part did feel profoundly different afterward. She was free of the painful burden she had been carrying all these years, which was a huge relief. This, in turn, allowed Deborah to feel calmer and more trusting in her adult relationships. She met a nice, kind man and is now happily engaged to him.

I hope Deborah’s story resonated with you and that you now understand the way your miraculous, multiple mind operates. As a trauma therapist, learning parts-based models like schema therapy and IFS has been revolutionary for both me and my clients. Approaching my clients' inner systems in this way—with a warm, compassionate, non-pathologising stance—allows me to treat even the most complex, traumatised person with confidence that I can help.

If you are struggling with painful relationships or any other form of suffering, please remember that there is always hope. As I often tell my clients, It’s never too late and never too much to heal.

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