Parts Working: 10 Evidence-Based Coaching Practices
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Parts Working, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
About 2 minutes
Try it here: list parts that pull against each other
When parts want different things, seeing them side by side makes the tug of war easier to notice. Write the pulls you feel.
Write the parts that pull you in different directions right now.
Practices that may help
- IFS Parts Mapping, Made Practical
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT. - Track the relationships between parts
Notice how parts trigger, protect, and sometimes war with each other — the system’s dynamics are as important as its members.
IFS Parts Mapping, Made Practical - Trim components to find what you can remove
Systematically ask which components in your current solution could be removed if another component took over their function.
TRIZ: Systematic Invention and the Logic of Contradictions - Draw or sketch the inner system visually
Put parts and their relationships on paper — who is close to whom, who holds whom at arm’s length.
IFS Parts Mapping, Made Practical - Chunk information before asking working memory to use it
Master the parts before combining them so assembly fits within working memory.
Working Memory: How Your Brain Holds Thoughts in Play - Deconstruct the problem to its fundamentals
Break the problem into the few things you actually know to be true, with no inherited conclusions.
First-Principles Thinking, Made Usable - Substitute
Ask: what component, material, person, process, or rule could be swapped for something different?
SCAMPER: A Systematic Creativity Technique - Internal Family Systems (IFS), Made Practical
IFS, developed by Richard Schwartz, treats the mind as made of distinct "parts" — protectors and wounded exiles — orbiting a calm core "Self." The work is to lead from Self, understand each part’s protective intent, and help carried burdens release. The model is widely used and increasingly studied, but its controlled-evidence base is still emerging compared with CBT or DBT. - Treat conflict as maintenance, not maintenance failure
Repair well and quickly — because how you end conflict matters more than how you conduct it.
Relationship Maintenance Behaviors - Break apart perceptual chunks that may be blocking you
If a problem object looks like one thing, try perceiving it as separate parts with separate functions.
Constraint Relaxation: Escaping the Walls You Built Yourself
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep working on my inner critic and nothing shifts, and I’m realizing it’s because the second the critic eases off, the part that procrastinates takes over
- What I’ve built has gotten so complicated that it keeps breaking in new places, and I suspect half the moving parts are doing work something else could absorb
- I can sense my parts one at a time but I can never hold the whole thing in my head at once
- Whenever I try to do the whole complex thing at once, every part of it is fighting for room in my head and it all falls apart
- When I list out everything I “know” about this problem, half of it is really just how everyone says it has to be
Related concerns
- Parts Work
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT.
- Parts Work Different Parts
Notice how parts trigger, protect, and sometimes war with each other — the system’s dynamics are as important as its members.
Track the relationships between parts
- Parts Work Gestalt
If a problem object looks like one thing, try perceiving it as separate parts with separate functions.
Break apart perceptual chunks that may be blocking you
- Parts Work Holmes
If a problem object looks like one thing, try perceiving it as separate parts with separate functions.
- Parts Work Parts
Parts mapping is an Internal Family Systems (Richard Schwartz) practice of systematically identifying and visually or narratively charting the distinct inner parts — critics, worriers, peacekeepers, wounded exiles — and their relationships to each other. It is a diagnostic and orientation tool: it shows you the terrain of your inner system before you try to work with any single part. Evidence sits within the broader IFS and parts-work literature, which is growing but not yet on par with CBT or DBT.
- Parts Work Tom Holmes
If a problem object looks like one thing, try perceiving it as separate parts with separate functions.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.