How to connect to your TRUE self - with Mike

Parts Work, Inner Children & The Self: A Conversation with Mike

This one is a little different — and I think you're going to love it.

I invited my friend Mike onto the podcast because we've been having the most beautiful, deep conversations over voice messages for years now. It started when he reached out to me to help his friend Finja recover from anorexia, and somehow, three years later, we're still talking — about spirituality, parts work, fear, grief, and what it really means to heal. So we decided to have one of our conversations in real time, and this is it.

This episode is for you if:

• You've ever wondered who the "you" is when you talk about loving yourself
• You feel like you're at war with different parts of yourself and can't figure out why
• You keep doing things you don't want to do and can't seem to stop
• You've done the therapy, read the books, had the insights — and still feel stuck
• You want to understand what parts work and Internal Family Systems (IFS) actually look like in practice
• You're curious about the difference between fear and discomfort — and whether they're even different at all
• You're on a healing journey and want to go deeper than behaviour change

In this episode, we cover:

✨ Mike's Word of the Year — why he chose "discomfort" and what it actually taught him

✨ The difference between your panic zone and your stretch zone — and how to know which one you're in

✨ Why checking in with your parts before, during and after facing fear changes everything

✨ What Internal Family Systems (IFS) actually is — explained in the most beautiful, accessible way

✨ The "self" versus your parts — and why the self is not a part at all

✨ The eight C's of self-energy: clarity, compassion, curiosity, courage and more

✨ Why all parts — even the ones that scare you — are rooted in love

✨ The difference between exiles and protectors, and how protectors keep you from your pain

✨ Why your protectors think you're still the age you were when the wound happened

✨ What happens to a part once it's healed — and where it goes

✨ The reframe that stopped me in my tracks: it's not self-love, it's part love

✨ My story of sitting at a traffic light, looking in the mirror, and saying "I see you"

✨ Why connection — not fixing — is what parts actually need

✨ The fear of loss at the root of every fear (try this experiment for yourself this week)

✨ Why grief might be the hardest emotion to sit with — and why it's also the most necessary

✨ The paradox of loss: you've lost something AND you've always had everything you need

✨ Why healing is seeing through illusions — and what that actually means in practice

Powerful quotes from the episode:

💬 "Discomfort and fear are the same thing. There's always a part that's afraid, and that fear is always connected to somewhere it once wasn't safe."

💬 "The self is love. That's literally what it is. So you can't love yourself — you can only love your parts. That's the real work."

💬 "I looked in the mirror at a red traffic light, looked into my own eyes, and just said: I see you. That was all she had ever needed."

💬 "Every single part of you — even the most destructive one — loves you so much it's trying to protect you from pain. There are no bad parts."

💬 "Healing is seeing through the illusions and coming to the ultimate truth that you are nothing and everything, all at the same time."

💬 "When a part finally feels seen and understood, that is the healing. Not fixing. Not reasoning. Just truly being with it."

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