Role-playing my inner parts - How I learned to love my triggers
It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to get deposed. I can already picture it. It wouldn’t be like the Amber Heard trial because I’m going to custom-make all my outfits. It’s going to be a combination of Legally Blonde, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and The Devil Wears Prada. And let’s not forget Clueless. I want to look so good that I get accused of committing fraud.
When I’m in a tennis outfit, I channel the intensity of Maria Sharapova. When I play pool, I channel the focus of Jeanette Lee, a Korean-American professional pool player who was given the nickname “The Black Widow.” When I’m driving, I channel Suki from 2 Fast 2 Furious, aka the OG Asian baddie. That doesn’t help much. I still can’t drive.
In a way, all these characters live within me. I used to be obsessed with this animated series called Cybersix. It was the shortest TV show ever. Only one season. Thirteen episodes. I rewatched it over and over. It’s a story about a genetically-engineered female assassin who fights against the evil scientist who created her. During the series, she adopts a genetically-engineered black panther as her sidekick, falls in love with a man named Lucas, and meets other lab-grown monsters created by the evil scientist to destroy her. I cried so hard when this mud monster named Terra sacrificed himself to save her from a burning tower.
I had an unfortunate incident during a game of Secret Hitler last week (someone told me I yelled too much). The next day, a friend of mine was holding a workshop on IFS (Internal Family Systems), and I decided to go despite being exhausted from the drama. Due to poor advertisement, I was the only one who showed up, so she offered to do a private session with me. I began crying right away and proceeded to bawl my eyes out the entire time while sitting inside this glass conference room in the upstairs section of a co-working space.
I didn’t care that other people could see me. I’ve cried in public enough times to know that people would rather look busy than pay attention. During the session, I talked to my anxiety and learned that she was just here to protect me. She’s scared that if I say something wrong, I’ll get killed. I also learned that she thinks I’m two. When I told her how old I was, she laughed. From IFS, I learned that there are no bad parts, and that completely changed the way I view my feelings.
After my session, I found myself having much more inner peace because even though my anxiety was still within me, our relationship was a lot better. There was more love, compassion, and understanding. Not long after, I started experimenting with speaking to the other parts of me. I gave each of them characters. Shame looked like Spike from Mario Tennis—tiny yet powerful. Anger was a dinosaur stuffed toy pretending to be a real dinosaur. When I gave these parts a voice, I could feel them start to relax their grip, and I saw them for who they truly were—children who’ve been neglected by their parents.
It was such a huge breakthrough moment that I began to wonder, how far can I take this practice? I have some tendon stiffness from running and jumping. Could I talk to my knee the same way? I tried it. Once again, I learned that the pain that was holding me back was there to serve a purpose. As soon as I showed compassion for the sensation, I felt a release of pressure from my knee joint.
Since then, I’ve had a better relationship with my body. I have less of a need to control my body. Yesterday, as I was going to bed, I told my body, “If you want to sleep in, sleep in. If you want to work out, wake up early. Either way, I’m good.” I ended up waking up two hours earlier than I normally do, and despite still being sleepy, I’ve never had an easier time getting up. All because I stopped resisting.
I used to barely have enough energy to do all the necessary things to stay alive. Now, all of a sudden, I have all this extra bandwidth because I’m not fighting with myself anymore. It’s Monday, and I’ve already finished the first draft of this blog post. That means I have the next four days to try out new activities, and if there’s one thing you must know about me, it’s that I love a good activity.
It’s mind-boggling how much you can get done when your parts cooperate. I finally understood the meaning of the phrase, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” If we operate from the perspective of there are no bad parts, it’s only natural for us to become curious about the characters that lie within us and the hodgepodge of stories they have to tell.
