Integrating Protective Parts for Self Healing

What are the essential energy work practices for improved Self Energy and inner alignment?

Protective Part energy is a fascinating concept that explores how our inner mechanisms shield us from perceived threats, often at the cost of obscuring our true selves. Tanner, an advocate for integrating energy work with parts work, delves into this topic through the lens of Human Design and other energetic practices to address complex trauma. With a focus on the nine Energy Centers, Tanner underscores the primal survival instincts that give rise to protective parts, manifesting as energetic patterns like 'I must' and 'I won't.' His perspective is shaped by the understanding that these shadowy survival energies, including feelings of disempowerment and rage, can be both personal and inherited. Tanner’s experiences highlight the necessity of recognizing these energies to unburden protective parts, thereby achieving healing and self-alignment.

Key TakeAways

- Energy work practices incorporating the nine Energy Centers in Human Design, elemental medicine, Divine Archetypal Resonance, and visualization are essential for improved self-energy and inner alignment.

- Incorporating energy work alongside Parts Work is crucial in healing processes to address complex trauma.

- Protective Parts connected to survival instincts exhibit energetic signatures that fuel strategies and survival energy, playing a crucial role in our survival instincts rooted in experiences of trauma.

- Understanding and working with Protective Parts is key to starting the healing journey by befriending and collaborating with these Parts to uncover the true self undamaged by trauma.

- The Unburdening process in healing involves a sequence of steps to balance Protective Parts with Self Energy and avoid unconscious control by Protective Parts, leading to consistent recovery for individuals with CPTSD.

Actionable Insights

- Incorporate energy work alongside parts work in healing processes for complex trauma

- Explore and integrate energy practices for improved self-energy and inner alignment

- Release and integrate Protective Parts back into the true self or transmute them into other energy

- Understand and collaborate with Protective Parts to uncover the True Self undamaged by trauma

- Differentiate between traditional Protective Parts and punishing/despairing parts in healing

Quotes

“I don’t think, for CPTSD, self-energy alone is sufficient. At some point when you get to some of the most gaslit, injured, lineage-related, collective-trauma-related parts, energies, or entities inside of us, self-energy alone — is not adequate in its potency to help soften some of those parts.” — Tanner  [0:04:42] 

“I think, and this is what is so powerful about IFS, is that there is a larger context with working with protective parts, that is really important to keep in mind, or else we can get lost in protective part work and lose sight of the key anchoring principle — the True Self.” — Tanner  [0:07:59] 

“Protective parts are native, fragmented, aspects of self that have broken off from the central channel, or inner world, and — are now running their own energy.” — Tanner  [0:11:51]

“The goal of parts work is to unburden protective parts of whatever they are carrying around — that make them want to stay separate from the true self, core, [or] central channel.” — Tanner  [0:12:33]

“This is my major point: it’s not just as simple as working with protective parts. Even though you can receive relief almost immediately working with protective parts, there is a larger, deeper, longer-term process of the unburdening sequence.” — Tanner  [0:16:10]

“Protective parts are connected to our human experience, they are fragmented aspects of our self that separated and came online to run different survival energies when moments happened in our lives, in childhood or adolescence, when it was very clear there was no safe adult to protect us, love us, or nurture us.” — Tanner [0:23:34] 

“Lean in to connect when in distress; that’s the ultimate survival code.” — Tanner  [0:24:27]

“The unburdening sequence is about keeping pace with and matching the protective part energy with equal measures of self-energy, so that your seat of power, your leadership, never degrades or diminishes to the point where protective parts take over.” — Tanner  [0:31:04]