What if a part is begging for rescue? Read on…
Sierra writes:
Sometimes I encounter a part of me that is screaming with desperation and it says to me, ‘Please help me, can’t you do something?’
I know it’s not a good idea to rescue parts but I’m not sure what to say to it. Just letting it know I hear how desperate it is seems inadequate somehow.
Dear Sierra:
I get it! Just saying to a desperate part of you, “I hear how desperate you are,” seems a bit cold! But there are ways to respond in such a situation that honor the part’s feelings and allow the situation to move forward.
First, be compassionate to the intensity of its feelings. It’s not just desperate, it’s screaming with desperation. Something is distressing it that much! So let both your tone of voice and your words express how much you get what it’s going through.
“I really get how desperate you are! There is something that is getting you that desperate!”
We hope that the part will feel invited to tell you more about what it’s so desperate about. So then the conversation is not about doing something, but about the specifics of its feelings.
If it keeps asking for help, you can say to it, “I really get how much you want my help… with something!” This also serves as an invitation for it to reveal more about what it is wanting and hoping will change.
It’s not that we refuse to help our parts. It’s that we know, based on long experience, that helping them doesn’t really help them. It keeps them in a loop, at what we call the “strategy level.”
True change will come from you being Self-in-Presence and the part experiencing itself being deeply heard in that relationship, not just for the action it demands, but for the feelings underneath.
