Case Studies Archives - Parts with Presley

Case Study: Are You Underqualified or Just Overresponsible?

Imposter syndrome doesn’t always show up alone – it often comes with “friends,” like perfectionism and over-responsibility (also known as “eldest daughter syndrome”). When we take on too much responsibility and want to do so perfectly, then it’s only natural to start feeling like we’re overplaying our hand.

It’s not actually a sign that you’re incompetent or underqualified though – it’s a sign that you’re trying to be responsible for things that were never meant to be your job. My client, who asked to be referred to as Jane in this case study, explored this issue in a pair of sessions, and showed us that when you stop trying to be all things to all people and find the right amount of responsibility, confidence comes much more easily.

Intimidating responsibilities

Jane is a tai chi enthusiast and was considering going part-time at her job and opening her own tai chi studio. As she thought about it, though, she started to feel nervous about her qualifications. She was also worried about how to help a friend who was working through some trauma. So we set in to work on her imposter syndrome-like feelings about helping people.

An Engineer Finds True Confidence

Sometimes I talk about “true confidence” and how it can help people face intimidating tasks and get more done, without having to “fake it till you make it.” But it might be hard to imagine how people find this confidence and what it feels like. So I’ll share a story of a session I had with a client that I’ll call Andy, where he uncovered his true confidence, not by faking it or convincing himself, but as a natural consequence of looking inside himself.

Andy is an engineer who loves to make art projects in his free time. He’s been working with me because his job includes a task that feels impossible, and when he tries to do it, he bounces off of it and automatically reaches for something different to do.

By this session, Andy said that The Impossible Task was already feeling “more approachable.” He’d broken it down into subtasks, and some of them felt achievable, but some of them still felt impossible. So we picked one of the impossible subtasks – a report he needed to write up and present in a meeting – and started exploring his feelings around it.

Jess Discovers What’s Stopping Her From Writing

Case Study: A single session on motivation

Recently I worked with Jess, who wanted to start writing but was having trouble getting herself to do it. She told me at the beginning of the session that it was hard for her to get motivated, because she was already feeling fulfilled in the short term through her favorite hobby. In the long term, she knew she wanted to write, but she figured that she was just too content to feel the motivation for it!

Conflict gives way to confidence

As we moved into parts work, she found that one part of her wanted to live in the moment, and another part of her wanted her to do meaningful work that would pay off in the future. Though these parts were at odds with each other, we realized that both of them wanted her to “make the most of life,” but in different ways. As she saw that they had the same goal, and came to understand their points of view, they relaxed.

This relaxation gave way to a strong, sturdy sense of confidence that seemed to be just what she needed. She said “I’ve got this,” and felt energized to pursue her writing.

Resourcing in Parts Work

I want to speak in defense of using resourcing techniques in parts work—something that standard IFS doesn’t include. I’ll discuss how I’ve found it helpful and end with a case study of a session that benefited from resourcing.

Standard IFS doesn’t use resourcing

Those of us who have studied Internal Family Systems (IFS) will recall that its founder, Dick Schwartz, takes a stance against using grounding and resourcing techniques to help clients get out of distress. His understandable concern is that these techniques can be used to overrule the protective strategies of firefighters or suppress the emotions of exiles.

If, for example, we instruct a client who begins to dissociate to look in our eyes and feel her feet on the floor, we are encouraging her to override her dissociating part, whose goal is protective. In response, that part is likely to increase its level of activity or turn to the next option in the hierarchy of distractions.
Schwartz, Richard C.; Sweezy, Martha. Internal Family Systems Therapy (p. 270). Guilford Publications. Kindle Edition.

A Public Interest Lawyer’s Road Out of Burnout

Taylor came to work with me because she had fallen out of some of her routines during the pandemic, and now that the housework had piled up, it was overwhelming to tackle it. She knew she would feel better if she started to socialize more again, and she thought handling this housework would make her more likely to do so. So she decided to participate in my pilot of Painless Productivity for 10 sessions.

As you’ll see below, we discovered that her craving for socializing was coming from an empathetic part of her that was burned out by her job in eviction defense law, and wanted to empathize with people’s joy instead of just their pain. We were able to release some of the pain the empathetic part was holding on to, and set Taylor up to be less vulnerable to that kind of burnout in the future. This graphic summarizes her journey through layers of parts on the way to a less burned-out lifestyle.

Case Study: Chris Releases Chronic Shoulder Tension

My friend Chris is also a coach, so we decided we would each give each other a session. With her permission, I’d like to share with you the heartwarming and remarkable story of the session where I coached her.

She told me that she was going through a transition period and feeling confused, like she used to have all the answers and now she “doesn’t know shit.” So I suggested we talk to the part of her who thinks she doesn’t know shit.

After some guidance to access the part, she found it as a feeling of heaviness in her chest.

Fred the Soothing Elephant

She shared that she had done similar work before and discovered another part that felt heavy in her chest. That other part appeared to her as a friendly cartoon elephant named Fred.

Fred would sit on her chest to soothe her. If we were only paying attention to physical sensations, we might have thought this part was Fred again, but Chris was able to tell that this part was different.