3 Key Parts of the Self
Happy October! It’s a spooky time of year, but hopefully this month’s theme won’t scare you off. We are looking at the 3 Key Parts of the Self.
There are various philosophies around the idea of a “self.” Is there truly an individual self or not? Honestly, I’m not sure of the ultimate answer to that question, but I have found a model helpful for understanding my own experience.
Relational Life Therapy describes 3 parts of the self: The Wise Adult, The Adaptive Child, and The Wounded Child.
Why does it help to understand these things? Well, because they represent specific brain states, and not all brain states are the same. If we can learn to recognize when we are not centered, we can then use tools to come back to a more balanced and relational headspace.
And things tend to go better when we’re centered.
Most of us, on any given day, default into our survival brain (fight, flight, fix), especially when we’re stressed. And when it comes to relationships, we can behave in adaptive ways that we learned when we were young—hence the name Adaptive Child.
The Adaptive Child in us is not at all interested in being relational, empathic, or taking responsibility for itself. It wants what it wants, when it wants it, thank you very much.
Additionally, when we feel really overwhelmed, we can shut down and be flooded with emotion, feeling like we are small and insignificant, and our problems are too huge to overcome. That’s the Wounded Child.
Part of the problem is that most of us have about 5 seconds’ worth of tolerance for feeling this way. When we reach the end of that tolerance, we go back to protecting ourselves the way we learned long ago, and the Adaptive Child takes over once again.
Ideally, myself included, we are trying to live more out of the Wise Adult. The Wise Adult is the part of our brain that has the capacity to feel discomfort while still choosing relational ways of behaving. Our Wise Adult is calm and clear-minded. It can go toe-to-toe with others while still holding them in a positive light. Not surprisingly, we do our best relational work from this headspace.
Over the next few weeks, we'll go a bit deeper into each of these “parts” of ourselves to better understand them and find ways to live more out of our Wise Adult.
But just to get you in the mode of self-awareness, let’s do a mini assessment. Which of these parts of yourself do you notice most active in yourself today?
Wounded Child - overwhelm, sad, hurting, powerless, stuck
Adaptive Child - reactive, harsh, black/white thinking, relentless, needing to be right
Wise Adult - flexible, warm, nuanced, realistic, forgiving
Good luck!
Happy to be in your corner,
Tom Page, LCPC
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