Turning to the One Who Had No One
Many of us who are autistic, or who grew up in the Irish diaspora, have parts who’ve used strategies of masking or pleasing others to try to cope with the more difficult aspects of our realities. Often, these parts started doing these jobs when we were very young, and they arrive in adulthood completely exhausted.
When demands exceed capacity, our parts struggle to keep up. We find ourselves unable to manage like we used to. Perhaps, we wonder if we were every really managing at all.
As we get to know these protector parts, we ask them questions like, what are you afraid would happen if you stopped doing your job? If you stopped masking? If you stopped pleasing others? Their answers reveal their fears.
We validate their fears, and let them know that we can help, if they want to be helped.
The protectors might start to trust us, and give us the honor of witnessing the young, vulnerable ones they are protecting.
Which is when we may find a young part, or parts, feeling alone in carrying enormous amounts of pain around a deficit of care.
The young one’s vulnerability may be rooted in an event (or pattern of events) with different layers of associated pain, such as:
· Something unbearable happened to our system
· The pain of what happened didn’t go away
· We could not protect ourselves from what happened
· No one noticed, cared, or helped us to mitigate the painful situation
· Others told us that our pain isn’t real
· Others told us that their pain is worse than our pain
· Others told us to be ashamed of ourselves for talking about the pain
When we approach these parts with curiosity, and patiently and courageously let them share with us what it’s like to feel this pain, we become the loving, validating presence these parts never got.
We might learn that these parts carry burdened beliefs like, “I don’t matter,” “My pain doesn’t matter,” and “There is no room for me.”
(Note: this is tender territory that is best traversed with an experienced guide or therapist; someone with whom at least most of your parts feel safe. This stage of the process takes as long as the young one needs it to take; we follow the young one’s lead, and we keep asking “Is there more?” until the young one feels we have fully understood what happened).
Slowly, as trust builds and the young one feels like we really get how it was for them, the pain dissipates. These young parts might be ready to release their burdened beliefs.
Because now they have had a reparative experience, with us. They now feel like they matter, like their pain matters, that there is room for them.
And then something truly remarkable might happen.
We might find that under all that pain, the young one holds an exquisite amount of wisdom.
I’d like to back up a bit to tell you a bit about my system: I studied ballet throughout my adolescence, but I didn’t have the classic body type of long legs and short torso required to be taken seriously as a pre-professional student. I’ve been aware of a part of me that felt sad since I was a teenager that I never got to be a professional ballet dancer.
But after spending time with my young parts that felt they didn’t matter, and like no one cared, they started to feel cared for, by me.
And they began to share with me the truth of what was really important to them.
About how ballet was a place where she could go and know what was going to happen. Where the studio space itself, with rose colored walls, an absence of clutter, and big arched windows letting in natural light, was aesthetically pleasing to this young one. How she reveled in the lovely, melodic music coming from the pianist accompanying class in the corner or the room.
The young one shared how much she needed the predictable rhythm of a class that reliably started with barre work, then moved to combinations done in the center of the studio, to large jumps and turns executed in a diagonal across the floor.
How when life felt harsh, scary, and bleak, when she felt like she didn’t matter, ballet class was a place where she could at least rest in knowing what to expect. There, she could calm down and enter a flow state where all her troubles faded away.
As I listened to her share these insights, I asked her if she knew she is autistic.
When she said she didn’t know, I updated her and let her know how much sense it makes to me that an autistic girl like she was would want to surround herself with beauty and move in scripted, consistent ways to settle her nervous system. I affirmed how brilliant she was to find such an effective way to soothe herself. And I shared how much I appreciated the precision with which she knew what she needed.
I let her know it makes so much sense to me that ballet was so important to her.
As I shared all this, I could tell she felt like I really saw her, and really knew her: something she hadn’t experienced before in relationship.
It was a beautiful moment of inner attachment.
Which is when something interesting happened: I noticed that the part that was carrying sadness that I didn’t become a professional ballerina had been listening.
With this new information about autism, this one started to make some connections: that the realities of a life as a professional dancer would have been the opposite of what I needed as an autistic person. Performing as a career would have required chronically budgeting my limited, inconsistent energy to tolerate working evening performances in a theater. It would have involved a sensory onslaught in which bright stage lights would have hurt my eyes, caking my face with heavy makeup for each show would have made me feel buried alive, and being perceived by an audience would have felt like too much intrusion into my field.
These realizations immediately unburdened this part who had always felt “less-than” for not making the cut in the world of pre-professional ballet. Where there had been chronic, low-grade grief for decades, clarity emerged that a performance career was never what was right for my system. But as a way to stim and engage in a special interest? Ballet was a perfect fit, and a place where I got what I needed.
And so, a transformation of perspective was complete: the part who carried grief about ballet now appreciates the role ballet played for me in regulating my system during a tumultuous adolescence. It also holds heightened reverence for the accuracy of the young one’s instincts to find what the system needs. No longer needing to grieve, this part became freed up to do something else. When I check with it now, it’s happy to hang out and listen to birds singing.
The parts that mask, and the parts that please still show up in my system. But at this point they play a role of trusted colleagues, who choose to step into their familiar role when their service would be advantageous, and who let me know when they need a break. Because now they trust that I will listen.
So, there you have it: I’ve taken you on a journey from listening to a part who was exhausted from masking and people pleasing, to being with the pain underneath these protective strategies, to unburdening the belief of not mattering, to connecting to the wisdom that was there all along.
If you’d told me years ago that noticing my pleasing parts would end up with me feeling peaceful toward my ballet years, I would have thought you weren’t making sense. But I share this essay with you today to give you an idea of what unknown treasures and surprising shifts can be revealed when we notice who is here, and turn towards who is here with curiosity, courage, and compassion.
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If you would like to get to know your protective parts, or explore what might have been your version of ballet, you are very welcome to book a free consultation for my one-on-one Internal Family Systems – informed facilitation.