The Multitude
I am not crazy. I just found out. All these voices going on. Feeling everything and nothing. They aren’t what I thought they were and not at all what I remember. My memory is made of feelings, flashes of smell and sound, and what I understand the world to be at that exact moment. In a year I’ll understand more so that when I remember a particular event it will have morphed just a little, too little to notice. A trick of the mind keeping me thinking I’m remembering the exact details and feelings of that past moment.
I’m me, the whole person . . . And, I have a host of parts of me.
Sometimes a part of me wants one thing and another part wants something else. I feel like a referee standing in between. “Get up, get busy, don’t be lazy!” demands a responsible part filled with determination and drive. Another part, the Hedonist, waves off Mr. Responsible. This part wants to hang out with friends and listen to music. “Chill dude. Homework can wait. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” I’m pulled back and forth trying to negotiate between different aspects of myself. I try to be rational with Mr. Responsible while appeasing Hedonist. “I’ll do chores first and then goof off for the whole afternoon.” I offer hopefully. But the parts are not having it. They dig in, refusing to give an inch. Finally, negotiations are over with the stronger part emerging victorious. I think you can guess which one.
I blow off all my chores, spend the whole day looking for something fun to do, then have a fight with my folks over not doing what I had promised.
Vigilant
I’m just a little anxious. I’m kind of worried. It feels like I’ve forgotten something, missing something that’s going to bite me in the, umm, let’s just say bum. I am Vigilant. Vigilant is one of my defenders. A part of me. A self-appointed protector of esteem and righteousness. This part of me is fierce and funny. In the beginning Vigilant was more of a watcher. Looking around at the world to see how things are done and how to fit in. Then, some of that hard stuff happened and Vigilant became less observant and more wary. Watching out for hurtful words and scary people pretending to be nice. The kind of dangerous things that Vigilant didn’t even know about before the first one happened to me.
I get overwhelmed.
I blow things out of proportion.
Sometimes, it seems like one part after another is fighting for center stage. It’s all I can do to hear myself think. It happens a lot in the middle of the night. I wake up from a strange dream and check the time on my phone. It’s a little after 1:00AM and now I’m wide awake. One part of me begins to think about the next day. Going to school and hanging with friends. Another part of me feels a rush about seeing my crush. Part of me that is freaking out about the history exam. Then Mr. Responsible grabs center stage to bring in a good dose of feeling incompetent about the exam. This part is always reminding me of what I haven’t gotten done yet. Like, you know, studying for my history test.
But now suddenly, I’m feeling incompetent about everything else too. What if my crush doesn’t notice me. Is my best friend upset about that joke I made? Did I get that other homework done? My heart’s pounding and my stomach is queasy.
I Meditate
I meditate. Turning my attention inward, I watch my thoughts. I am Self. When I meditate, I let go of everything that isn’t truly me. I remind myself, “I am not my thoughts. I am not my feelings. I am not my body. I am not my mind.” I take a deep breath and focus on the part of me that observes everything, like the iris of an eye looking out. I feel still, full of energy, and simply aware. I notice different parts of myself, but I don’t get caught up in them. Sometimes they need my attention, and other times they follow their own concerns. If I stay with this inner focus long enough, the world feels like it’s made of vibrations. My mind seems like a hologram created by my brain, and I feel like I’m made of vibrations too. The line between me and the world fades. I feel open, light, and free from problems, pain, or worry.
Pressure Valve
I am a pressure valve. I let off steam. My name is Firefighter. This part of me puts out the fires of stress when they burn too hot; it enlivens me when boredom has made life gloomy. Firefighter lives in my solar plexus. He’s been around in one way or another all my life.
Firefighter seems to have arrived during that time when I was forced to go to school and sit in a classroom for hours, instead of running, playing and exploring the world.
When I pay attention to the signs that I’m getting overwhelmed or I’m a little lost in tedium this part in me has smart ideas for changing it up. Take a walk, rollerblade, see a movie with friends, hide away for 30 minutes with headphones on listening to music, or throw a party. When he’s allowed to do his job, Firefighter is a source of fun and excitement.
But if I ignore the signs for too long, Firefighter acts out in ways that I always regret. I know he’s leaping into action when my stomach tightens up, my back arches, and my shoulders begin to rise. In my head I hear, “Screw it. I’m out of here!” Next thing you know, steam is rising. I let myself have an angry rant. I go to a party and make a fool of myself. I blow off homework and doomscroll through socials. I send a group text spilling a secret that hurts someone I like.
When I don’t pay attention to this part of myself, Firefighter is a source of regret.
Burden
I have parts that feel unlovable. These are parts that I’ve pushed away to avoid feeling overwhelmed by fear and sadness. These parts came into being at a time in my life when, as a kid, I did not feel supported or appreciated. Like all children, I wanted to be admired. Instead, I was criticized and ignored. As a result, these sad, mad parts carry the wounds of childhood for me.
Powerful protectors, guarding the gates of my mind, banished the child parts from awareness. But these parts of me do not stay silent. They make their pain felt through troubled dreams, aches and pains, headaches, rashes, and illnesses. Their pain breaks through as panic attacks or an overwhelming urge to escape, to run and hide in my room. I often think of these banished and hurt parts like problems that need fixing. But that isn’t true. There are no bad parts of me—just parts that need to be noticed and understood. These parts need attention from the Self.
Self and Parts
The Self is the animating force from which the parts of us derive their essence. It is the source of compassion, creativity, courage, clarity, curiosity, calm, connection and confidence. It gives life to each of the parts and is the core of who we are. When I pay attention to the whole of me, I feel Self bringing feelings of respect, love, and confidence to my wounded parts. And that brings balance to my entire system of Self and parts.
Permission
Why is change so difficult? Even when I know what I should do, I often don't want to do it. Part of me feels stubborn and wants to stick with what’s familiar. I also know there’s a side of me that means well and wants to improve. But sometimes, other parts of me just want to be selfish, angry, or honestly, a bit bratty. I’ve been noticing this more lately. When I check in with the part of me that seems to watch over everything—the Gatekeeper—and ask if it’s okay to change, it usually agrees, but only up to a point. If I don’t force myself to change or pretend there’s a simple fix, and instead listen to the part that says, “hey, slow down, change is hard, don’t push so much,” it becomes easier to make small, steady changes. I just need to ask for permission.
Miss Guilt
Tipping over the edge starts simply enough: a part of myself remembers a time in the past that, in the remembering, feels bad. Another part who remembers feeling bad in a similar way to the first rises, followed by a third. I feel them like links in a chain, locking in, amplifying the bad feelings. Another part of me, Miss Guilt, chimes in to make sure I know that I deserve to feel bad. My heart is pounding. I am verging on panic.
Stage Manager
In my mind I hear a calm voice speak. “Everyone stop talking, right now. I want to hear what our mind and body needs but I can’t because all these voices and upsets are about to cause a panic attack. Be quiet. Rest a moment. Breathe and reach for connection with the whole self.”
“Good. That’s better. Look at us, this flood of bad feelings is making our physical system out of whack. It’s not good for our heart to be pounding and our chest so tight we can’t catch our breath. Doom scrolling through the past is not good for our mental system. It is never true that we are completely bad. Miss Guilt, you think berating will keep further mistakes from being made, but your timing is off.”
The voice pauses and then continues, “Breathe and reach for connection with the whole self. Reach for calm.”
Stage Manager is that part of me that steps in to make peace, the middle child of parts. Her focus is to calm things down and get the system moving toward balance. Her’s is the voice of reason absent of judgement. I love her, this witty and caring part of me.
The Resonance Field
I am the dynamic space between systems. I am the resonance field.
Something strange happened to me. I was talking with a friend during lunch at school when I saw an orange light moving between us. Like in a scene from a sci-fi movie. The energy of it felt excited and happy, almost like it was made of lightning, bouncing back and forth. Since then, I’ve noticed a similar feeling between myself and others, and even between things, though it’s not always as strong. It happens so often that I started to pay attention to the details of this energy between us. It doesn’t always look orange like that first time. It’s in the air but also has waves or currents like water. The energy seems to carry feelings and sometimes even thoughts.
I told a friend about it, she laughed and said that I have too much imagination. Still, I feel that I can sense what someone is really feeling, even if they don’t say it. I have another friend who sees letters and stuff in specific colors. He says it’s called synesthesia.
Maybe the energy I experience is something like that, or maybe it’s like the Force from Star Wars. It could be intuition or a sixth sense. Whatever it is, the more I notice it, the easier it is to see and feel.