Ep 178: When All Your Parts Need Your Attention at Once

If you’ve been struggling with the state of the world lately, you’re not alone. I’m feeling the weight of what’s happening in our country and how people are being treated. In this episode, I’m sharing the parts of me that are showing up in response to all of it, because I’m guessing some of your parts are loud right now, too.

You might notice an angry part that wants to scream and stomp her feet, or a hopeless part that wants to hide under the covers. Maybe there’s a righteous part that won’t stop fighting, a sad part that’s mourning, a shameful part spiraling about privilege, or even a hopeful part that quietly keeps showing up. They’re all valid, and sometimes they all want your attention at once.

It can be overwhelming, but my message today is that it’s okay for all of these parts to be here. You don’t have to pick one. You don’t have to have it all together. You don’t have to be inspiring or productive right now. You just have to be human, and when you have the capacity, you can choose one small way to show up—for yourself or for someone else. That’s enough.

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Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hey there, welcome back to Your Favorite You.

I'm Melissa Parsons, and I almost didn't record this episode. I've been sitting with whether I should, whether it would help anyone, and whether I even have anything useful to say right now. But here I am, because I know I need to hear this, and maybe you need to hear it, and I know that I need to say it out loud.

I'm struggling with the state of the world, with the state of our country, with what's happening to people, to all the other humans, and how we're treating each other. And today I want to talk about all the parts of me that are showing up in response to this, because I'm guessing that some of your parts are screaming right now too, and they might need your attention.

So let me start with my angry part. My angry part is loud right now. She wants to scream really and stomp her feet. And though it feels like screaming into the void, because all of my closest friends and people feel the same way that I do, they are angry too.

We all want to yell and kick and scream and fight. My angry part wants to argue with strangers on social media. She also wants to argue with relatives on social media. She doesn't. She wants to tell them how despicable their views are.

She wants to make them see what they're doing, what they're supporting. This angry part is furious about ICE and the inhumanity being shown to other humans in America and really across the globe. She's enraged that the Epstein files still aren't fully released and that all of those victims are nowhere near getting the justice they deserve.

She's pretty livid about the steps we've taken backward on women's rights, on science, and gay rights, about treating black and brown people as separate and different, about telling transgender people they don't have the right to exist as they are.

My angry part really could go on and on. There's just so much to be angry about. And anger, when it's righteous anger about injustice, that's important. That energy matters. But my angry part is also exhausting because she really has never gotten a chance to rest recently.

Next, I want to talk about my hopeless part. My hopeless part just wants to sit under the covers and be cozy. She doesn't want to interact with other people much at all because she just doesn't see the point.

Why write a podcast? My audience is small. Who am I even helping? There are more days where I don't think my podcast helps people than there are when there are days when I realize that if it helps only me to get this all out into the world, it's still useful.

And my hopeless part has been asking, what difference does any of this make? She's the one creating what I now recognize as a functional freeze. I can coach my clients. I can show up for that fully. I'm not having trouble doing that.

I can play with my new puppy, Frank Costanza, but I don't want to do much else. And here's what I'm learning about my hopeless part. Of course, she's trying to protect me. She's helping me conserve my energy.

She's trying to keep me from being continuously disappointed. If I'm hopeless much of the time, then seeing what's happening on the news won't be so harmful to me and my parts. If I don't expect it to get any better, I can't be devastated when it gets worse.

She thinks she's keeping me safe, and of course, in some ways, she is. But then there's my righteous part, and she has a completely different agenda. My righteous part gets me out protesting and campaigning.

She's working for Amy Acton for governor of Ohio and Brian Hambley for Secretary of State. She desperately wants to be right and for others to see it too. She spends time with others who feel the same way she does.

She keeps up with the latest news. She needs to know what's happening so she can bite it and be right about it. But she's tired. My God, she's so, so tired because the news cycles never end. There's always another thing to be upset about, another injustice to fight, another right being stripped away.

My righteous part thinks if she just works hard enough, stays informed enough, shows up enough, maybe we can turn this around. She's not ready to give up, but she is exhausted too. I have a sad part.

My sad part is mourning. She's mourning what she thought was progress in the United States. And she can't believe how far we've fallen and how fast. She thought we were moving forward. She thought certain laws were settled.

She thought we had learned from history. My sad part feels pretty heartbroken for the people being harmed, for the future it thought we were building, for how much pain there is in the world right now.

She's not angry. She's just sad. And it's a deep, profound sadness. And then, because apparently I can't just feel my feelings without also feeling bad about my feelings, there's my shameful part. She realizes that much of the progress I was mourning was benefiting white people disproportionately.

That black and brown people and more recent immigrants to the U.S. have never had the advantage of feeling safe here. My shameful part is ashamed that I didn't see that for what it was, that I didn't understand the full picture, that I was experiencing what felt like progress while others were still fighting for basic safety and dignity.

She's also ashamed that I'm in a privileged position to be able to sit on my cozy couch and block out the world when my hopeless part takes over. I know so many people do not have that option. So do you see the fucking conundrum?

I'm hopeless, so I retreat, but then I'm ashamed that I can retreat, which makes me more hopeless, which makes me more ashamed. It's a spiral and not the upward one that I've talked about before. It's a downward one.

And of course, it's exhausting. But then, and I almost can't believe I'm saying this, there's my hopeful part. She's quiet, tentative, stubborn, tenacious. She wants to believe there's hope for all of humanity, not just for the people who look like me or who have the privileges that I have, for all of us.

My hopeful part mostly shows up after protesting or being involved politically. I'll go to a protest feeling completely hopeless, and then I'll leave feeling a bit of pride and hope. Something about being in community with other people who give a shit.

Something about showing up anyway. My hopeful part definitely was there when I was watching Bad Bunny and all the performers at the Super Bowl halftime show. She was dancing a little bit, if I'm being honest.

My hopeful part also shows up big time when I'm coaching the women I'm honored to coach. She sees that helping one person change can have massive ripple effects. When one of my clients learns to treat herself with more love and compassion, she doesn't just change her own life.

She changes up how she shows for her kids, her partner, her friends, her colleagues, her patients. That ripple goes out and out and out. My hopeful part thinks maybe this is how change happens, one person at a time, one act of love and compassion at a time.

She's not loud. She doesn't try to argue with my hopeless part. She just keeps quietly showing up. Here's what else I've noticed. I'm most able to be in capital S self when I'm coaching my clients. It makes sense that those times of the week are the ones that I most look forward to.

Because when I'm coaching, I can find calm, curiosity, compassion, confidence, courage, clarity, connectedness, and creativity. All those eight C's of self that we talk about in IFS. They're there when I'm with my clients.

My angry part can be there, but she's not in the driver's seat. My hopeless part can be there, but she's not running the show. My shameful part can even be there, but I'm not overwhelmed by her. When I'm in self, I can hold all of these parts with compassion.

I can understand that they're all trying to help me in their own way. My angry part is trying to motivate me to fight injustice. My hopeless part is trying to protect me from constant disappointment.

My righteous part is trying to make things better. My sad part is honoring what we've lost. My shameful part is trying to keep me accountable and aware of my privilege. My hopeful part is trying to remind me that change is possible.

They're all working so hard and they're all kind of at war with each other, which is why I'm so tired. So what am I learning from all of this? And what do I hope you can learn by examining this in yourself?

First, that it's okay for all of these parts to be here. I don't have to pick one. You don't either. I don't have to choose between hopeless and hopeful, between angry and sad, between righteous and ashamed.

They can all be here. They all are here. Second, functional freeze isn't failure. My hopeless part trying to protect me by keeping me on the couch with my puppy, that's not me giving up. That's me conserving energy so I can show up where it matters most.

Coaching my clients, being with the people that I really love, taking action when I have the capacity. Third, I'm learning that small actions still matter. My hopeless part wants to tell me that my tiny podcast with a small audience doesn't matter, that one person campaigning or protesting doesn't make a difference.

But my hopeful part and my capital S self know better. Every act of love and compassion matters. Every person who learns to treat themselves better creates ripples. Every person who shows up to protest, even when they feel helpless and hopeless, is part of the solution.

And fourth, and this is the hardest one for me who wants to have it all figured out. I don't have to have this all figured out. I don't have to resolve the conundrum. I don't have to make my shameful part stop spiraling or my hopeless part suddenly become optimistic.

I just have to keep showing up, messy, uncertain, with all of my parts needing my attention at once. So if you're struggling right now with the state of the world, I want you to know you're not alone.

If you have an angry part that wants to scream and stomp her feet, that makes sense. If you have a hopeless part that wants to hide, that also makes sense. If you have a righteous part that's exhausted from fighting, that also makes sense.

If you have a sad part that's mourning, of course that makes sense. If you have a shameful part spiraling about privilege, that makes sense too. If you have a hopeless part that keeps quietly showing up, she makes sense and you can hold on to her.

You don't have to pick one part. You don't have to have it all together. You don't have to be inspiring or motivated or productive right now. And you certainly don't have to be in capital S self all the time.

That's not possible. And that's not what anyone is asking you to do. You just have to be human with all of your messy, complicated, contradictory parts. And maybe when you have the energy, you show up somewhere, protest, campaign, coach someone, get coached, love someone, treat yourself with a little more compassion.

Because here's what I believe, even on my most hopeless days, when we do the work to try to heal ourselves, we change how we show up in the world, and that matters. It might not feel like enough. My hopeless part definitely doesn't think it's enough.

But myself knows that that's something. And something is better than nothing. I don't know if this episode will help anyone but me. My hopeless part is pretty convinced it won't, but I'm hitting publish anyway because maybe you needed to hear that you're not alone in this, that your parts are all trying to help you, that functional freeze is real and it's okay, that showing up imperfectly still counts.

And maybe I just needed to say it out loud, to name these parts, to honor that they're all working so hard, even when they're working against each other. So if you're struggling, me too. If you're wondering if any of this matters, me too.

But I'm still here with Frank, my puppy, and my clients and my protest and my podcast, showing up messy, showing up uncertain, showing up anyway. And if you could show up somewhere too, anywhere, that's enough for today.

Thanks for listening once again and take care of yourself and all of your parts this week.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!