Parts work is a method of working through stressful events and trauma by relating to the self through “parts” or components of one’s current self. There are many psychological modalities that utilize parts techniques, including Internal Family Systems Therapy, Psychodynamic therapy, Coherence therapy, and many kinds of narrative approaches. They might use the term inner child or inner children to refer to past selves, or they might focus on the role the part might play in keeping a person safe.
Personal example from survivor M.: Something that helped me reclaim my story was meeting someone who taught me to dismiss words and narratives that pathologized me and robbed me of my power. previously i had used the terms that i was taught by the system like mentally ill, personality disorder, damaged, difficult to love, or even unloveable. But this person showed me that speaking and thinking this way does not serve me; that these labels were not created to serve me. Instead it is much more helpful for me to think of my behavior in terms of adaptations and to recognize that thoughts I have and actions I make are vestiges of long-ago-learned survival strategies and in fact to try to attribute them to the parts of myself from which they originate. It gives me much more comfort and congruency to understand that when I feel like I want to die for example, it’s not the whole me that wants to die, it’s a part of me that is putting forth that suggestion. the way to heal my parts like that is not to hate them or try to rein them in and bring them under executive control but rather to love them and listen to them and try to make them understand they are safe now; to listen and thank them for keeping me safe in the past and then show them that i have more power now and can devise other solutions.
There are many resources on this type of work. Here’s a video from one of the foremost researchers on parts work explaining a concrete example of how one person used the technique to reconnect with joy in their life.