Lonely Parts

A moment of solitude on the Camino.

In 2023 the WHO declared loneliness an epidemic, in 2024 I went looking for my lonely parts and this is a story about that journey. This wasn’t a conscious intention as I turned my life upside down, calling off my engagement and walking away from everything as I knew it. It was, however, a soul’s calling and for the last 9 months I’ve spent a lot of time alone listening and loving on these lonely fragmented parts of myself.

I hope this story gives you a better sense or a deeper understanding (if needed) of what it's like getting to know or trying to get to know different parts of yourself. I also want to normalize the idea of having multiple parts in the mind and body because they’re real and want our attention and this definitely includes the lonely ones.

Of course, it’s natural to enjoy solitude or feel lonely at times, but letting lonely vulnerable parts take the lead in life doesn’t usually have the best outcomes. The best outcomes come from self-led parts and I feel grateful to have a self-led/self-like part that loves solitude. I enjoy spending time alone reading, singing, dancing around the kitchen or watching a movie by myself. But, and it’s a big BUT, along my healing journey I’ve found protective parts that take solitude too far, into hyper-independence, not accepting or asking for help and generally keeping people at an arms length. The beauty of parts work is once you understand what these parts are protecting you from and why, and you approach them with compassion and curiosity, your internal system can begin to soften. There will have more space for love and connection.

For years, I never questioned if I was lonely, I simply assumed I liked being alone. I never questioned because my protective parts kept me far away from the feelings of my vulnerable lonely parts. I learned early on to disconnect from my body and disassociate, it was the only way to navigate what was going on around me and what was being done to me. As I got to know these protective parts, I started to get glimpses of lonelier parts—seeing how my internal system ensured I was never too alone, just enough to keep some connection, but not enough to risk getting hurt like in the past.

I started to notice a pattern of times in my life when the lonely vulnerable parts tried to get my attention and how I quickly made choices to shove them back down. There was no discernment, no questioning if my choices aligned with my values, just a deep uncomfortable empty feeling that needed to go away at all costs.

As I continued my own personal IFS journey, my protective parts started to soften and allow more memories and vulnerable parts to show up, and intuitively it felt like the time to give them my full attention. So I decided going on a long walk like the Portuguese Camino was the perfect place to take them and do just that.

I tucked that intention in my heart and began walking last July on a beautiful sunny day walking a fairly straight forward 12K route along the coast of Portugal. I found my hostel easily and didn’t feel lonely at all. Day 2 was pretty much a repeat, though I began to notice little twinges of uncomfortable emptiness, but nothing I couldn't handle. The day was a good mix of alone time and being around people.

At the end of the second day, I met a lovely fellow Canadian woman and we ended up walking together for three days. We clicked and had some great conversations as we walked along the stunning coast and I could have easily kept walking with her. But my intention was finding and spend time with my lonely parts, so we said our goodbyes and headed off separately. I ended up getting lost and running out of food and water that day, leaving no room for lonely parts, just worried ones. I eventually found food, water and my accommodation, then took a rest day in a private room—but still no lonely part.

My first five days had been in Municipal Hostels, where the beds are cheap and accommodation bare bones.  Despite the lack of comfort there was something magical about sleeping in these hostels with the pilgrims you’d either pass, be passed by or walk with during the day. I can't accurately describe how wonderful it was (even with the physical pain) to be walking all day, securing the coveted 10 euro bed, handwashing your sweaty clothes and falling asleep with the same faces you started the day with. What I can say though, is my lonely part was nowhere to be seen.  

After a few days, I made the decision to get another private room to shorten my walk day from 28k to 14k. This made sense, rest my feet and spend time with my lonely part, but it wasn't meant to be. By this time I was in Spain and the language barrier was very apparent, and this stirred up other parts as well as a hint of my lonely part. As I arrived at my private homestay, I was met by an older Spanish man, who was, let's just say not warm and fuzzy. I was early and he was not interested in letting me come in, and I suddenly felt blended with emotions from all these distressed parts and my reaction was to leave and just keep walking. I made (or the lonely part) the impulsive decision to keep heading towards the Municipal Hostel in Vigo which was the 28K day I was trying to avoid. By this point it was 11:30 am, getting really hot and I still had about 18K to walk to secure a bed. It was not a smart decision.

I walked along the ocean, periodically looking at my phone trying to find different accommodation, but knowing I really wanted to be in the Municipal Hostel. My lonely part was trying to get my attention and I wanted nothing to do with her. All I wanted was to catch up to the familiar faces that I had started this journey with.
I kept walking, worrying whether I should just find a place closer, would I be too late to even get a bed? Then at one point, I surrendered. Surrender in this case was a taxi on the side of the road that within 15 minutes had me in the line up for a bed. It wasn't long before I saw my first familiar face and I felt my shoulders soften and my lonely part subsided back into my subconscious.

The next day, found me connecting with 3 lovely Italian pilgrims that swooped me up and I walked with them right to Santiago. My lonely part had no need to come out, even when I walked alone for hours, I had the comfort of knowing they’d be waiting for me at the end of the day.

Ten days later, I said goodbye to them in Santiago, I was on my own again and setting out to walk another 100K to Finisterre. I thought this would be the opportunity, the perfect time to get to know her. But other parts kept distracting me and I couldn't connect. This makes sense to me now, I’d shifted into a high sympathetic state as my life as I knew it simultaneously unraveled and had to be put in order to leave for an extended amount of time. The Camino was the perfect place to come out of survival mode, feel my grief and let myself just breath—there was no room for lonely parts.

A part of me on the Camino

Ironically when I set out on this trip with the knowledge I'd be heading to my childhood hometown afterwards, I found myself skipping over the whole Camino trip in my mind. I just wanted to get to the "safety and familiarity" of what I knew. I thought it would be easier, and the first two weeks were the exact opposite because of course, this is where the lonely parts started to make their presence known— my birth place. With copious amounts of time alone, and no distractions my lonely teenager part started letting me hear her story in bits and pieces and I begin to feel what she had been feeling so long ago. I began to understand why I never wanted to feel anything—it made perfect sense. There was a lot of healing done in those 10 weeks up there but there was more to do.

Where it all began, Terrace BC.

When I got back to the island in December I settled in to do more parts work. While I’m really good at connecting with my own parts, I know the benefit of having more self-energy on board for better results and chose to work with my IFS practitioner for several sessions. In the following 10 weeks I made connection with several tender parts and finally connected with a preverbal part, the one with attachment wounds, the one desperate to be loved and paid attention to at any cost. It’s slow going with her but we’re building a relationship of trust that I will show up for her, give her the love she didn’t get and make the adult decisions. By the end of the journey, the intention I had set out with came to fruition, not like I had planned but that’s why it’s a soul’s journey. They don’t come with a set of clear instructions and bullet points.

My daily parts walk in North Saanich, BC.

In 2025, there is still an epidemic of loneliness, probably more so, and that is something I want to help change. And I feel more confident than ever that I can because of the journey I’ve taken. It wasn’t easy and I know for certain that I shed more tears than I have in my whole life but every single one was necessary for my healing so I can help others heal.

We don’t have to have an epidemic of loneliness, and one way to stop it is to take the steps to befriend our parts, especially the lonely ones. When they’ve been unburdened, there will be Confidence to reach out and say hi, Courage to ask for help, Vulnerability to share a personal story, Compassion to help a neighbour, Curiosity of a different opinion, Clarity to have a courageous conversation and lastly Connection to give and receive LOVE.

Thanks for reading I know it’s a long one but it was a long journey….

Love Margo

The journey to the part that loves to sing

They say all roads lead to Rome and it certainly has felt like that when it comes to finding my voice.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with my voice — leaning more toward hate than love. And when I started my business 10 years ago, the spotlight on my lack of voice grew even bigger. My manager parts became determined to fix it, find it, strengthen it, or change it. Mostly from a well meaning self-like part, one that mimics the qualities of Self but is still a part. Yet I always felt the agenda behind it.

I come by it honestly though, I often heard my mother say that I must have somehow known she needed a quiet, well-behaved baby —instilling the message that being silent meant being loved. All of my report cards described me as a very quiet polite little girl —and it was true. The cost of that silence caused me to miss opportunities and endure traumatic events. Another message I received from my mother was that loud voices were scary and a sign of anger. Combined with everything else I learned, my parts came to believe that anger was unsafe and should be suppressed. More evidence that quiet was the answer.

It’s a spiritual mystery to me, how our souls know what needs to come to the surface and when, but in late 2016 I got the nudge to go to Toastmasters. I definitely had two parts polarized about this decision as it took me six months to get to my first meeting. But when I walked in the door with my racing heartbeat it felt very welcoming and I felt determined. I was there every Thursday morning at 7:00 am for the next three years, stretching, strengthening and trying to finding my voice. I felt comfortable enough giving a speech by the end of those three years, but there was something missing —a voice coach.

Amy’s the real deal, she’s a trained opera singer and has an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Music as well as just a lovely human. I worked with her quite regularly in 2020/21 where she taught me another layer of finding my voice. This time through a combination of anatomy, proper breathing and imagery. It was enjoyable to do this work with her, but it still felt like my parts had an agenda, that something must be ‘fixed, found, or changed”. Eventually, life got busy, and I felt I’d learned enough, so our time together came to an end.

Fast foward to the early summer of 2024 when Amy reached out to see how I was doing. I was about to leave to walk the Camino, so we decided to check in later in the fall when I got back to Canada. I reached out to her in October and we did one online session as a little tune up with the intention to meet up in person when I got back to Victoria. Somewhere along the way that fall I got the notion that I wanted to see if I could sing. I’m not sure if it was all the time I spent alone, music cranked, trying to learn the Cajon or it was the words my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Shaw, wrote on my final report card. ‘Margo has finally mastered carrying a tune'. Either way something about it intrigued me.

You’d have to know me to see this was a far fetched idea. But you can gather from my childhood messaging that I would have never thought singing was for me. I trusted the instinct anyway and booked the lesson, and it felt different before I even showed up. Partly because I’d already been singing along to a couple of songs I enjoyed and partly because there was just curiosity with no agenda. I was just curious if I could carry a tune and I felt even if I couldn’t, I’d be able to access compassion for myself. And in the world of IFS (internal Family Systems) that points to self-energy.

So off I went to my very first singing lesson with Amy and it was everything I could have hoped for. After some warmup drills and her confirming that I’m not tone deaf and can carry a tune (Yay!), she asked me to play one of the songs that I have been singing along to on Spotify. A shy nervous part came out for a minute or two but then it disappeared and I felt confident to sing in front of her which was a little surprising. The most interesting moment though was near the end of the lesson when I was able to really belt something out. It surprised Amy as she’d never heard that much power come out of my mouth, and it surprised me because just for a moment I got a sense of “I shouldn’t be that loud, that strong, that powerful”. The parts with the old messaging tried to take up their old space but I had enough self-energy to reassure them I could handle this. The agenda to fix, find or change it was no longer there, though it easily could have been. Because singing is a great way to strengthen the vagus nerve, which is directly related to our sense of safety and social connection and it also will strengthen my voice with consistent practice. But for me, it simply makes me happy —end of story.

Thanks for reading and I hope this story inspires you to keep following your own roads to Rome as you never know where it might lead you. And it it’s singing you can find Amy here https://www.amysteggles.com

Staying at the Table

Do you have a word for 2025?

I do, it’s COMMIT.

The last couple of years I’ve participated in a deep meditation experience online with Dr. Kevin Preston. This year Commit came through, and on New Year’s Day after the meditation I wrote down 29 things I was committing to in 2025. It’s a long list, so I won’t exhaust you with all of them, but one really significant one to me is “I commit to staying at the table with my loved ones”. This one stings, as I have a nervous system and a part that can get overwhelmed in certain situations that finds me leaving some really important tables. While staying at the table is a metaphor for staying in conversation and communicating through conflict, I actually have a part that shows herself hiding under a table, trying to get away from all the chaotic noise in my childhood home.

Sometimes it’s difficult to understand what is happening inside our systems, to know why we’re doing certain behaviours that aren’t in our best interests. It’s almost like something takes over and you have no control over what you’re doing. It can feel very defeating to keep repeating a pattern, but when you understand the science behind this “take over” you can start to have a lot more compassion for yourself.

The first thing to understand is neuroception, simply put, a part of our brains are always scanning for danger, it’s wired in and subconscious. It looks for flavours of things that have been dangerous in the past and if there’s a similarity (even a tiny one) to a past event that wasn’t safe, it sets off the flight, fight, shutdown or freeze (which is a combination of flight and shutdown) response. This can happen even when you consciously know you’re safe. In my case, when I’m metaphorically or actually sitting at the table with some of my family members and big emotions arise from their nervous system, my brain scans this information, picks up the flavour that in the past big emotions weren’t safe (little girl under the table getting away from the chaos) and sets off my autonomic nervous system to flight and then to freeze. Everyone’s system is unique, so for you it might set off a fight response or going right into shutdown.

The second thing to know is that our parts can also have their own nervous system states. So when something overwhelming happens and a part of the psyche is fragmented off, it recreates that same nervous state when activated. Using me as the example again, my protective part that wants to flee from big emotions goes into the flight response, and I literally leave the situation and then once I flee, the little vulnerable part under the table who feels terrified and immobilized goes into freeze.

When I learned this about myself, it really made a lot of sense to my past behaviours. It doesn’t excuse times when I’ve abruptly left the table and hurt people, but it does help to understand the why behind it. All change starts with awareness and while I did improve greatly with awareness of this behaviour, I still found myself tripping up in times of big life stressors. It wasn’t until I added in consistent daily nervous system exercises and regular parts work that I could feel a shift in my system. It’s the work I do with my clients and I’m really passionate about it because of the changes I’ve seen in myself. And it might sound crazy, but I’m grateful for family members who activate me so I can continue my own healing work.

Circling back to commitment, if you really want to change how you show up in relationships this isn’t something you do a couple of times and you're done. The good news though, you’re probably already doing things that are helping; things like walking in nature, meditation, exercising, connecting with friends or your partner, petting your dog. Keep doing the things that already give you a sense of peace and joy (I’ve started singing lessons) and add in the science backed big shifters of learning how to regulate your nervous system and getting to intimately know your parts.

Lastly, even though I’m an optimist by nature, I know shame parts can come up and try to make us feel bad for past behaviours. But I hope you can now see there really was a good reason for those behaviours, and you can find some compassion for yourself. When we know better, that sets us down the road of doing better one committed tolerable step at a time.

As always much gratitude for you reading this.

It wasn’t about my will…..

Dad and the Cesna 180 circa 1970s

Parts show up in unexpected ways and one of those ways is through your resistance. Recently I decided to finally get my will done. It’s been on my list of things to take care of forever, but I always found something more important to do.

A recent conversation with my sister where she asked me if I’m scared to die sparked the subject again. And a few days later, I decided to start the process, but found myself once again wrestling with will resistance. But instead of just tossing it aside once again, I decided to get curious about this resistance and to do some parts work around it.

You can do your own internal family systems work anywhere and I personally do mine in the tub as I’ve had a lot of success connecting with my parts while submersed in warm water. I start by doing a few rounds of 4,7,8 (inhale 4, hold 7, exhale through the mouth 8) breathing and then I close my eyes (you do not have to close your eyes) and go inside. I focused in on the resistance to doing my will and felt into a sensation of chest pressure. I invited whatever part that wanted to come in, to do so and waited for a few minutes. Slowly an image came into my mind of flying with my dad, his wife and my sister in his small Cesna 180. I was about 11 and we’d been in Kelowna and were taking off from Okanagan Lake. It was windy and the water was choppy and we were being blown all over the place as we ascend into the air. I’m not one to remember much of my childhood, but I do remember how terrified I felt, and confirmation from my dad that it was a very sketchy takeoff.

Many decades later my sister told me my dad’s wife had slapped me across the face because I was screaming. I have no memory of that, but can only imagine how that felt to a young girl who was already terrified and thinking she was going to die.

As a young child or even as an adult, when something traumatic happens and its not met with connection and emotional safety, a part will fragment off and basically stay frozen in time with it’s own upsetting feelings, thoughts and emotions around the event. The memory will also be stored in the body and anytime something similar is experienced it will activate the parts, as well as the state of the nervous system. This explains my continued fear of flying.

In my case there was a cluster of parts, the part that became terrified of flying, the part that got her face slapped and a part that was only shown to me that night in the tub. This was a little vulnerable part that got out of the plane in shock after landing and wanted the love and comfort of her own mother who was not available to her. This was the part that had to internalize those terrified feelings and emotions and who never got any empathetic connection after something really terrifying happened to her. As I witnessed this it made so much sense to me and I was so grateful for this part showing me how she had felt in those moments. With my self-energy I was able to be a compassionate witness to what happened to her, I was able comfort her, give her what she’d needed at that time and I felt a softening in my body has she felt heard.

I will most likely have to work with these parts again, but I more insight into what they need and I’ve already had success connecting with them when I get on a plane. With a combination of checking in with them, letting them know they are safe, bilateral taping and breath work my heart rate does go down. :-)

I hope my story was helpful and sparks some curiosity into working with your own parts.

Thanks for reading and being on this journey with me.

Stories are a communal currency of humanity ~ Tahir Shah

Found on a a cute little cobbled street in the town of Frome, Somerset UK, July 2024.

After a 7 year absence I’ve decided to reinstate my blog. My intention for this space is to tell you personal stories about my own healing journey with IFS (Internal Family Systems). To introduce some of my parts, how they show up, how I help them and ways to live with more Self-Energy. While everyone’s system is different, I personally have gained a lot of healing from hearing other people’s stories and I hope you do too. Comments and questions welcome!