Part of Me Wants This and Part of Me Does Not, and What to Do When You Are Exhausted from Arguing with Yourself

You have been going back and forth on this for months. Part of you wants to hand in the notice, and part of you can list in order every reason that would be a catastrophe, and neither side has ever won, so you carry both of them into every Sunday evening and get no rest from either one.

If part of me wants this and part of me does not is roughly where you have been living, you have probably decided somewhere along the way that it means you are indecisive, or dramatic, or that you simply do not know your own mind. That is the reading I would want to change.

What I want to walk you through is why the argument is happening in the first place, what parts actually means in therapy without the jargon, what tends to happen when you keep overriding the same side, and how to listen to a part without handing it the decision.

Key takeaways

Two parts of you disagreeing is usually two protective strategies trying to prevent two different kinds of pain, and neither one is wrong about what it is guarding. Getting them to agree was never the goal. Silencing the side you like less tends to make it louder somewhere else, usually as procrastination, resentment, or a decision you make suddenly and cannot explain afterward. The research on IFS is promising and still early, and you should know that before you commit to any approach.

Why do I want two completely different things at the same time?

Because each want is attached to something you actually need, and the two needs are in real competition. One side is holding certainty, income, and the approval of people who were proud of you. The other is holding freedom, honesty, and a version of your life you have not lived yet. Both are legitimate.

The version of this I hear most often is somebody telling me there is a part of them that wants to stay in Seattle and a part that wants to be in New York or London, and then asking how they are supposed to know which one is actually them. It is a fair question with a slightly annoying answer, which is that both of them are.

What makes it exhausting is that you have been treating it as a debate you are meant to win. One side makes its case, the other rebuts it, a third voice arrives to criticize you for still being on this after two years, and by the end of the afternoon you have spent real energy and moved nowhere.

The better question is not which one is right. It is what each one is afraid would happen if the other got its way. Asked of the same person on the same day, that usually turns up two different fears of two different ages, and the standoff becomes something you can work with. That is most of what the work looks like for people in languishing in adulthood, where the in-between has gone on long enough that both sides have dug in.

What does it mean to have "parts" in therapy?

Parts are not separate people living inside you. In Internal Family Systems it is a way of describing the recurring states, impulses, and protective strategies that show up in a person, each with its own job and its own history. The overachiever. The one that checks out. The one that says yes and means no.

Naming them does something specific. Instead of I am a mess, you get a scared part of me is running this right now, and that small amount of distance is what makes it possible to look at something rather than be submerged in it.

Because I work with imagery and creativity, I will often ask someone to give a part a shape. What it looks like, how it moves, how much room it takes up. If it showed up at a dinner party, what kind of guest would it be, does it arrive early and rearrange the seating, does it stand near the door with its coat still on. That sounds like a game and it is doing serious work, because people can describe a part in images long before they can explain it in sentences, and the describing is what makes the space.

None of that turns the part into a stranger. It is still you. What changes is that you are looking at it instead of looking out through it.

Why does ignoring a part make it louder?

Because the need underneath it does not go anywhere when you stop listening. Push down the exhausted part and it comes back as burnout. Override the angry one and it turns into resentment you cannot quite locate. The part loses its voice and keeps every bit of its influence, and then it starts communicating sideways.

Most people learned to do this early and for good reason. Anger made someone leave, needing things was embarrassing, rest looked like laziness and wanting more looked ungrateful, so you got very good at telling yourself to get over it, and it worked, and you became productive and agreeable and composed.

What tends to happen after enough years is that the ignored part stops asking politely. The person who has accommodated everybody for a decade goes off over something small. The one who always delivers simply stops being able to. The one who has held the line since college quits on a Tuesday with no plan and afterward cannot explain to anyone, including themselves, what that was.

Worth saying plainly, because it gets misread constantly. Loving a part does not mean obeying it. You can understand exactly why the angry part wants to send that email and still not send it, and you can hear out the part that wants to cancel and go anyway. Understanding what something is protecting gives you a choice you did not have while you were fighting it.

How do I listen to a part without letting it make the decision?

Notice the conflict without ruling on it first. Name both sides plainly, one wants out and one is frightened. Ask each what it thinks will happen if the other one wins, thank the protective intention, keep the decision yourself, then pick something small enough that you will actually do it.

The thanking piece sounds soft and it is the part that does the most. If you have spent fifteen years motivating yourself through criticism, being accompanied by yourself rather than managed by yourself is genuinely unfamiliar, and for a lot of people it is the first time anything in there has gone quiet.

What you are aiming for is not agreement. Sometimes one part stays scared while another part goes ahead, and you move with the fear still present rather than waiting for it to leave, which it was never going to do on your timeline.

Between sessions I usually send an invitation to keep this going, a journaling prompt for a particular part, or drawing, collage, or an imagery exercise, chosen for the person in front of me rather than pulled off a list. Nothing is graded and there is no wrong way to do them. The parts that need the most attention frequently do not speak in sentences, so we find another way for them to be heard. More on how that works sits on my IFS therapy page and in the slower underneath work of analytical psychotherapy.

Does IFS parts work actually work?

The evidence is promising and still early, and you should have the real version of that rather than the marketing one. A 2025 scoping review found twenty-seven peer-reviewed studies, most of them case studies and small trials, with only two randomized controlled trials among them.

The review identified IFS as promising for depression, post-traumatic stress, and chronic pain, and for building self-compassion and self-forgiveness, while being clear that larger and better designed studies are still needed. One of those two randomized trials, published in 2013, tested an IFS-based program with rheumatoid arthritis patients and found reductions in pain and depression alongside improvements in physical function and self-compassion.

So I would not tell you this is as heavily researched as CBT, because it is not, and anyone presenting it that way is overstating what exists. What I can tell you is that the idea underneath it, that people do better when they stop attacking themselves, has a much broader research base behind it in the work on self-compassion.

There is one caution worth naming. Parts language is not right for everyone and it should not be applied rigidly. For people who are vulnerable to dissociation, talking about parts as though they were separate beings can be confusing rather than useful, and that shapes both whether and how I would use it with someone.

You are not trying to become one certain person

You are not broken for being divided. You have been carrying an argument for a long time, both sides have been right about something, and nobody has slowed it down enough to find out what either of them was actually afraid of.

You do not need to arrive with it settled, and you do not need to have picked a side before you talk to anyone about it. Most people come to me in the middle of it, which is the useful place to be.

I work virtually only, with clients in California, Washington, New York, and the United Kingdom.

If this is where you are right now, I would love to support you here. Reach out for a consultation, it is twenty minutes and free, and we can see whether we are a good fit. [BOOKING LINK NEEDED: Calendly consultation URL]

Cassie Weeden, MA, LMHC, LPCC. California LPCC #17397. Washington LMHC #LH61269164. New York LMHC #012037. BACP Registered Member, MBACP #415535

Common questions about parts work

Is having parts the same as having multiple personalities?
No. Dissociative identity disorder is a specific clinical condition with a very different presentation, and IFS is not describing that. Parts in this sense are ordinary mental multiplicity, the same thing you are doing when you say a part of me wants to and a part of me does not, which almost everybody says without thinking about it.

What is a protector in IFS?
A protector is a part whose job is keeping something painful from happening again. It might be the one that drives you to overwork, or the one that pulls back when somebody gets close, or the critic that goes first so nobody else gets the chance. Protectors are usually doing accurate work based on old information.

Can I do parts work on my own?
You can start. Noticing the conflict, naming both sides, and asking what each one fears will get you a surprising distance. Where it tends to need another person is when a part is carrying something old enough that approaching it alone just triggers the protection again, which is usually the point where people stop.

What if I cannot feel any parts at all?
That is common, especially for people who have spent years being analytical about themselves. It usually means the parts are doing their jobs efficiently enough that they do not announce themselves. We tend to start from behavior instead, the thing you keep doing that you cannot account for, and work backward from there.