Why You Sometimes Feel Like a Stranger to Yourself | Inner Compass & Parts Work Explained

Have you ever had a thought or emotion arise that led to a behavior or a way of engaging in the world that made you feel ashamed or confused? Maybe you asked yourself, “Why did I do that? That doesn't feel like who I am at my core.”

If you’ve ever had that experience—like we all have—then you’ve begun to understand that you are both an inner compass and parts.

In this video, I share what the core self is, which I call the inner compass, and what parts are. I explain how your inner compass and your parts together make up your unique personality, and how wounded parts can lead to thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and behavior choices that are not helpful and actually interfere with getting your needs met.

I also share a case study of what this looks like in real time and introduce the concept of how to work with your parts.

A Recap: What Is the Inner Compass?

The inner compass has many names across spiritual traditions. Some call it the soul. Some call it divine nature.

I use the term “inner compass” because it’s the part of you that guides you to make choices that are in your best interest. It is whole and complete. It can never be harmed. It has clarity, compassion, non-judgment, creativity, confidence, courage, and connection.

What Are Parts?

Parts are also divine, especially when healed, just like the inner compass. But they can carry wounds. These wounds include thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and behaviors that disrupt your connection to your inner compass. They may lead you to act in ways that are not in your best interest and may even harm yourself or others.

Parts are not bad. They are part of your personality and hold unique wisdom. They help you experience life, sense when needs or boundaries have been violated, and know how to advocate for yourself, express individuality, and set boundaries.

However, when parts operate from a wounded place, they can cause harm even while trying to protect you.

How Parts Are Formed

Parts form in childhood. In my upcoming book, The Divine Within: Healing Ourselves to Heal the World, I devote several chapters to the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood. These stages shape your attachment style and personality, and create neural pathways.

Neural pathways are essentially parts. You have child parts, and these child parts hold unique emotions, beliefs, and behaviors formed in response to early experiences.

In childhood, your frontal lobe—which supports adult perspective, emotional regulation, rational thought, compassion, and collaboration—is not fully developed. It doesn’t fully come online until around age 25, and only if childhood experiences support its development.

This means that even though your inner compass connects to your frontal lobe, some parts of you don’t. So, as an adult, you may still act from these younger parts using survival strategies from childhood that are no longer helpful.

Parts, Shadows, and Roadblocks

These unhealed parts can create what I call roadblocks. In depth psychology, Carl Jung referred to them as shadow or complexes. They are aspects of your personality that have not yet been integrated.

The point of the human experience is to integrate the shadow—to bring awareness and healing to these parts.

Understanding your unconscious, your parts, and your roadblocks helps you become more whole. It supports your ability to show up in the world in ways that do not cause harm, but instead foster collaboration and the fulfillment of your needs.

A Real-Life Example

A client I worked with was struggling with alcohol addiction. They found that when overwhelmed by life stressors, they had the urge to drink and party.

We explored this urge through parts work. We discovered it came from a teenage part. When we got curious about this part, it explained that the first time it drank—at age 12—it felt calm, connected to friends, and less impacted by the trauma and stress at home.

The drinking helped numb those difficult emotions. So whenever life felt overwhelming, the teenage part said, “Go drink.” And the client would feel temporarily calm, but the next day they couldn’t function. This led them to say, “I need a healthier relationship with alcohol.”

We kept getting to know that teenage part and the younger parts that carried the wounds. These parts began to trust the client’s inner compass—the part that cannot be harmed, that is compassionate. The client started asking the parts what they needed. They said they needed to know they would be taken care of.

Soon the client could recognize the urge to drink as communication from the teenage part. Instead of drinking, they started journaling, practicing yoga, meditating, and connecting with those parts. They reparented those parts.

We also used EMDR, a trauma treatment using bilateral eye movements to help create new neural pathways.

Over time, the client no longer felt the urge to drink. Instead, when overwhelmed, they responded with self-care and inner connection.

How to Start Working With Your Parts

Parts show up any time you don’t feel calm, curious, and compassionate. A mindfulness practice can help you begin to observe your emotions, beliefs, sensations, and thoughts as parts—separate from your core self.

By observing and getting curious about these parts, you can begin to understand what they need and how they are trying to help you, even if their methods are outdated.

If you’d like to try this, I recommend practicing mindfulness and watching the videos I’ve shared on my YouTube channel. I also guide you step by step in this process in my upcoming book, The Divine Within: Healing Ourselves to Heal the World, which will be published by Atmosphere Press, hopefully by December.

Thank you for being here. You are exactly where you are meant to be on your healing journey. If you found your way to this video, you are already in the process of remembering and healing. Trust the process. With time, you can integrate all of your parts and move through the world with greater ease.

Sending you deep love and appreciation for how you shine your inner divinity.