What Is Parts Work Therapy? A Chicago Therapist Explains

You Are Not Just One Thing

Part of you wants to reach out. Another part says don’t bother. Part of you is ready to move on. Another part isn’t done grieving yet. Part of you knows exactly what you need to say. Another part goes silent every time you try.

This isn’t confusion. It isn’t weakness. It’s just how the human mind works — and parts work therapy is built entirely around that reality.

Also called parts therapy, this approach recognizes that your inner world isn’t a single unified voice. It’s more like a committee — a collection of different parts, each with its own history, its own fears, and its own way of trying to keep you safe. Parts work therapy helps you stop fighting that committee and start actually listening to it.

At 2nd Story Counseling in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, parts work is central to how we practice therapy. We’ve been doing this work for over 20 years — with individuals navigating trauma, grief, identity, relationships, and the very human experience of feeling at war with yourself. Here’s what parts work therapy actually is, how it works, and whether it might be right for you.

What Is Parts Work Therapy?

Parts work therapy is an approach to psychotherapy grounded in a deceptively simple idea: your personality is not monolithic. You are made up of many parts — subpersonalities, inner voices, emotional patterns — that each carry their own beliefs, memories, and protective strategies.

These parts usually developed for a reason. A part that shuts down in conflict probably learned early that it wasn’t safe to speak up. A part that pushes people away may have been protecting you from a loss that felt unsurvivable. A part that drinks too much or works compulsively is almost certainly trying to extinguish pain it doesn’t know how to handle any other way.

Parts work therapy doesn’t pathologize these responses. It gets curious about them. When you understand why a part does what it does, something shifts. You stop identifying completely with it. You stop being at war with yourself. And real change becomes possible — not through willpower or white-knuckling, but through genuine inner understanding.

Parts work therapy goes by several names — parts therapy, parts-based therapy, and most formally, Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS). These terms are often used interchangeably, though IFS is the most rigorously developed and widely researched framework within the broader parts work tradition.

The Three Types of Parts

Within IFS-based parts work, every part falls into one of three categories. Understanding these helps you start to recognize your own internal system.

Exiles

Exiles are the youngest, most vulnerable parts — the ones carrying old pain, shame, fear, or grief from experiences that were too much to process at the time. These parts often formed in childhood and carry wounds like I’m not lovable, I’m not safe, or I’m too much. The rest of your system works hard to keep them locked away, because their pain feels overwhelming.

Managers

Managers are the parts running your day-to-day life — the inner critic, the perfectionist, the people-pleaser, the over-achiever, the planner. They work proactively to keep you functioning and to prevent Exiles from being triggered. When you hear yourself say I should or I have to or don’t feel that right now, that’s often a Manager talking.

Firefighters

When Exiles break through despite Managers’ best efforts, Firefighters react — fast and hard. These are the parts behind impulsive behaviors: substance use, binge eating, rage, dissociation, compulsive scrolling, sexual acting out. Firefighters aren’t trying to harm you. They’re desperately trying to put out an emotional fire. Parts work therapy helps Firefighters find less costly ways to do their job.

The Self

Underneath all of your parts exists something parts work therapy calls the Self — your core, undamaged essence. The Self isn’t a part; it’s who you are when no part is running the show. It’s characterized by calmness, curiosity, compassion, clarity, and courage. The goal of parts work isn’t to eliminate your parts — it’s to help your Self lead them.

What Parts Work Therapy Helps With

Because parts work operates at the level of your internal system rather than individual symptoms, it tends to be effective across a wide range of concerns. At 2nd Story Counseling, our therapists use parts-based approaches to help people with:

Trauma and PTSD

Trauma doesn’t just create painful memories — it creates parts that formed to survive those memories. A part that stays hypervigilant. A part that goes numb. A part that avoids anything that might bring the pain back. Trauma therapy grounded in parts work helps you approach those protective parts with compassion rather than force, and gradually access the wounded parts underneath — at a pace that feels safe to your entire system.

Anxiety

Anxiety is almost never all of you — it’s a part of you. Usually a part that learned, somewhere along the way, that scanning for danger kept you safe. Parts work therapy asks a different question than most anxiety treatments: not how do we make this part stop, but what is this part afraid will happen if it lets its guard down? That question leads to real relief rather than symptom management. Learn more about our approach to anxiety therapy in Chicago.

Grief and Loss

Grief is rarely just one feeling. There’s the part that misses the person desperately. The part that’s angry. The part that feels guilty for laughing at something last Tuesday. The part that isn’t sure who you are without them. Grief counseling informed by parts work helps you give each of those experiences its due — without any part of you having to be rushed, silenced, or told it’s grieving wrong.

Depression and Low Self-Worth

Depression often involves Exile parts carrying deep feelings of worthlessness, shame, or hopelessness — and Manager parts running on empty trying to keep you functional. Parts work therapy helps you connect with the parts underneath the depression, understand what they’re carrying, and offer them something they may never have received: genuine compassion from your own Self.

Relationship Patterns

The way you show up in relationships mirrors your internal system. If a part of you fears abandonment, another part may cling or over-explain. If a part expects rejection, another part may push people away before they get the chance to leave. Relational therapy combined with parts work helps you recognize which parts are driving the patterns you keep repeating — and respond from Self instead.

Self-Criticism and the Inner Critic

That relentless inner voice telling you you’re not enough? That’s a part. It almost certainly developed to protect you — maybe to motivate you before someone else could criticize you first, or to keep you small so you wouldn’t be punished for standing out. Parts work therapy helps you understand what that critical part is actually trying to do, which is usually the first step toward quieting it.

Parts Work Therapy and the LGBTQ+ Experience

For LGBTQ+ individuals, parts work therapy often resonates in a particularly deep way — because many queer and trans people have spent years, sometimes decades, managing an internal system shaped by the need to hide, adapt, or fragment themselves to stay safe.

You may recognize parts like:

• A part that learned to monitor how you present yourself in every room you walk into
• A part that internalized messages about who you are — and still carries them, even now
• A part that shuts down intimacy because vulnerability has historically come with cost
• A part that grieves relationships, family, or versions of yourself that were lost in the coming out process
• A part that’s exhausted from decades of code-switching and performing safety

Parts work therapy doesn’t ask you to explain your identity or justify your grief. It creates space for every part of your experience — including the parts that formed under pressure — to be seen, understood, and helped to heal.

At 2nd Story Counseling, we’ve provided LGBTQ+-affirming therapy in Chicago’s Lakeview and Boystown communities for over 20 years. Our therapists understand the intersection of minority stress and internal parts work in ways that go far beyond a checkbox. Learn more about our therapy for gay men in Chicago.

Parts Work Therapy for Men

Men often come to therapy having spent years listening to a very loud Manager — the part that says keep it together, don’t need anything, figure it out yourself. That part usually developed for good reasons. It may have kept you functional during times when showing vulnerability wasn’t safe or wasn’t modeled.

But underneath that Manager is often a much quieter set of parts — parts carrying grief, loneliness, shame, or hurt that never got acknowledged. Parts work gives those inner experiences a language and a place to go, without requiring you to perform emotional openness before you’re ready.

Many men find that parts work feels less threatening than traditional talk therapy precisely because it externalizes the experience. You’re not being asked to be vulnerable — you’re being asked to get curious about a part that feels something. That’s a meaningful distinction. Learn more about our men’s therapy in Chicago.

Parts Work and Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)

Several therapeutic approaches use parts language — Gestalt therapy, Schema Therapy, Transactional Analysis all work with inner states in similar ways. But Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) is the most fully developed, most extensively researched, and most clinically sophisticated parts-based framework available.

Developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz — who was, notably, based right here in Chicago — IFS gives parts work a complete system: a clear map of the types of parts, a defined role for the Self, and a structured process for healing that has been recognized as evidence-based by the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices.

At 2nd Story Counseling, IFS isn’t one tool among many. It’s the clinical backbone of how we practice. Our therapists have advanced IFS training and have been integrating parts work into their practice for years — combined with trauma-informed approaches, relational therapy, and CBT where appropriate.

Learn more about IFS therapy at 2nd Story Counseling →

What Parts Work Therapy Looks Like at 2nd Story Counseling

Parts work therapy isn’t a rigid protocol. It’s a way of orienting to your inner world — with curiosity instead of judgment, with compassion instead of force.

In session, your therapist might help you:

• Notice when a part has taken over — when you’ve shifted from observing a feeling to being it
• Create a little space between your Self and the part — not to suppress it, but to get to know it
• Ask a part what it’s afraid of, what it needs, what it’s been carrying
• Bring Self energy — calmness, curiosity, compassion — to parts that have never experienced that from you before
• Help protective parts understand that they don’t have to work so hard anymore

This work happens at your pace. Parts work therapy doesn’t push you to go somewhere before your system is ready. If anything, it’s the opposite — the therapeutic relationship is built on trust, and your therapist will follow your internal system’s lead.

We offer both in-person sessions at our Lakeview office and telehealth sessions throughout Illinois. We accept Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO. Most clients are seen within the same week or the following week of reaching out.

Frequently Asked Questions About Parts Work Therapy