There might be a part of you that scrolls when you should be sleeping. A part that cancels plans and immediately feels relieved. A part that goes quiet when someone gets too close. A part that agrees with everyone in the room even when you don’t actually agree.

Usually, we don’t feel particularly compassionate toward these parts of ourselves.

We get frustrated. We tell ourselves we need to stop overthinking, stop procrastinating, stop people-pleasing, stop shutting down, stop doing the thing we already know isn’t helping.

But one of the things I come back to often in therapy is this: what if the things that frustrate you most about yourself aren’t there because something is wrong with you? What if they make sense?

Not necessarily because they’re helping you now. But because somewhere along the way, your mind and body learned that this was something you needed to do.

There is usually a reason we do what we do

I use parts language pretty often in therapy because I think most of us already experience ourselves this way.

Part of me really wants to go, and another part wants to stay home.

Part of me knows I need to say something, but another part is terrified of upsetting them.

Part of me wants closeness, and another part wants everyone to leave me alone.

We can have different needs, fears, impulses, and beliefs operating at the same time. That doesn’t mean we’re inconsistent or broken. It means we’re human.

Sometimes those different responses developed because they helped us navigate something difficult. Sometimes they formed around things we learned very explicitly, and sometimes they came from hundreds of smaller experiences that taught us what was safe, what wasn’t, and what we needed to do to get through it.

You may have learned to read the room before deciding how you feel.

Maybe being useful made you feel more secure in your relationships.

Maybe shutting down kept an argument from becoming overwhelming.

Maybe expecting the worst helped you feel less blindsided when something went wrong.

Maybe being incredibly hard on yourself felt safer than giving someone else the opportunity to criticize you first.

When we look at our patterns this way, the question starts to shift from “Why am I like this?” to “Why might this make sense?”

And I think that’s a much more interesting place to begin.

Even the patterns you don’t like have some kind of logic

One of the ideas I appreciate about both parts-based therapy and Coherence Therapy is that our unwanted patterns aren’t usually random.

There is often some emotional logic underneath them.

Imagine someone who desperately wants a close relationship but pulls away whenever someone begins to really know them. From the outside, that might seem contradictory. They want closeness, so why would they keep creating distance?

But maybe somewhere inside, closeness also means being vulnerable to rejection. Or losing yourself in someone else’s needs. Or depending on someone who could leave.

If any of those things feel true, pulling away suddenly makes a lot more sense.

These kinds of protective patterns can also show up between partners, where each person’s way of protecting themselves can unintentionally create more distance.

The same thing can happen with perfectionism. You might consciously know that no one expects you to be perfect. But if making a mistake feels like being exposed, disappointing someone, or proving something painful about yourself, then “just stop being a perfectionist” isn’t particularly useful advice.

Your response is doing something.

The goal isn’t to convince yourself that every coping strategy is good for you. Some of the ways we’ve learned to protect ourselves can create very real problems in our lives and relationships.

But understanding why they’re there gives us somewhere different to work from.

Why fighting yourself can make things harder

When we don’t understand the purpose of a pattern, we tend to treat the pattern itself as the enemy.

I shouldn’t feel this way.

I need to stop caring what people think.

Why can’t I just say no?

I know there’s nothing to worry about.

I need to get over this.

Sometimes we can override ourselves for a while. But if some part of you still believes that a behavior is necessary, telling yourself to stop doesn’t really address the problem.

If pleasing people feels connected to staying loved, “stop people-pleasing” can feel surprisingly threatening.

If staying busy keeps difficult feelings at a manageable distance, slowing down might initially make you feel worse rather than better.

If your inner critic believes it’s keeping you from becoming complacent, being kinder to yourself might actually feel dangerous.

That’s why I don’t think therapy is always about learning how to control ourselves better.

Sometimes it’s about understanding why something inside of us believes this response is necessary in the first place.

Getting curious instead

This is where curiosity can be surprisingly powerful.

Instead of immediately asking, How do I stop doing this?, we might slow down enough to ask:

What happens inside of me right before I do this?

What feels risky about doing something differently?

If I stopped managing this situation in the way I usually do, what am I afraid might happen?

What does some part of me believe this is preventing?

Sometimes the answer is obvious. Sometimes it takes a while to find.

And sometimes the answer surprises us.

The person who thought they were simply “bad at conflict” realizes that disagreement feels connected to losing the relationship.

The person who can’t seem to rest realizes that slowing down brings up a deeply uncomfortable feeling of being unproductive or undeserving.

The person who constantly second-guesses themselves realizes they learned a long time ago that trusting their own perspective could create conflict with people they depended on.

Suddenly, the behavior looks different.

It may still be causing problems. But it isn’t senseless anymore.

You don’t have to hate yourself into changing

I think this is one of the most important parts of this kind of work.

Understanding why you do something doesn’t mean resigning yourself to doing it forever.

It also doesn’t mean every coping strategy needs to be celebrated or protected from change.

It means we can hold two things at once:

This made sense. And I might not need it in the same way anymore.

That creates room to experiment.

Maybe you can disagree with someone and find out that the relationship survives.

Maybe you can make a mistake and discover that it doesn’t mean what you thought it meant.

Maybe you can let someone be disappointed without immediately fixing it.

Maybe you can notice the urge to shut down and stay present for ten seconds longer than you normally would.

Over time, those experiences can begin to teach your system something new.

Not that it was ridiculous for protecting you in the first place.

Just that things might be different now.

And I think that is a much kinder—and often much more effective—place for change to begin.

If you’re curious about therapy but aren’t sure what starting would actually look like, I’ve answered some of the questions I hear most often about starting therapy.

 

— Sarah Richardson, PLPC