How to Heal the Fragmented Parts of Yourself (And Stop Recreating the Past)
There's a moment I'll never forget.
I was sitting across from a client—we'll call her Sarah—who'd just had a profound realization about her childhood. She could finally see why she people-pleased. Why she abandoned herself in relationships. Why she kept choosing partners who were emotionally unavailable.
She understood it all. Perfectly. With stunning clarity.
And then she looked at me and said: "So why am I still doing it?"
That's the question, isn't it?
You can understand your patterns. You can trace them back. You can connect every dot between your past and your present.
But understanding doesn't make them stop.
Because your patterns aren't just thoughts in your mind. They're parts of you that split off during overwhelming experiences—and those parts are still there. Still frozen in the past. Still running the show.
Most therapy stops at understanding. But understanding is only half the equation.
The other half? Going back and retrieving the parts you left behind.
This is what integration actually is. And it's what changed my life—and the lives of every client I've worked with who felt stuck despite years of insight.
Let me show you how it works.
What Emotional Fragmentation Actually Is
When something overwhelming happens—something you don't have the capacity or support to fully feel or process—your psyche does something intelligent: it fragments.
Parts of you split off. They carry the frozen emotions, unmet needs, and beliefs from that moment. And they don't just disappear. They stay there. Waiting.
This isn't metaphorical.
These fragmented parts are why:
You have intense reactions to "small" things
You keep attracting the same painful relationship dynamics
You sabotage what you consciously want
You feel disconnected from yourself, your body, your emotions
Here's what actually happens:
In the moment of overwhelm—abuse, abandonment, terror, grief you couldn't hold—your system made a brilliant choice: If I can't process this right now, I'll put it somewhere else. I'll dissociate from it. I'll fragment.
That part of you—along with everything it was feeling, needing, believing—got exiled into your unconscious.
And it's still there.
Still feeling what it felt then. Still needing what it needed then. Still believing what it believed then about reality, about safety, about love.
Think of it like this:
Trauma is like a bone that broke and was never set correctly. You adapt around it. You compensate. You function.
But the root pain remains. And it keeps creating your reality—your patterns, your reactions, your relationships—until you actually heal it.
Most therapy helps you understand the broken bone. Integration helps you actually heal it.
Why Understanding Isn't Enough
You can spend years in talk therapy gaining insight. Connecting dots. Making sense of your story.
You can understand exactly why you people-please (childhood conditioning for love). Why you shut down in conflict (freeze response from unsafe environments). Why you sabotage intimacy (fear of abandonment playing out as self-protection).
But if those fragmented parts are still exiled—still holding the pain, still running the same protective patterns from the shadows—nothing fundamentally changes.
Because healing doesn't happen in your conscious mind.
It happens when you can:
Go back to the moment the part fragmented
Actually feel what it's holding (not just think about it)
Give it what it needed then—presence, safety, validation, protection
Bring it back into connection with the rest of you
This is somatic. This is embodied. This is integration.
And without it, you can understand yourself perfectly and still be controlled by parts of yourself you can't see.
How Integration Actually Works
The process I use to help people retrieve and integrate fragmented parts has evolved over five years of deep practice—both on myself and with clients.
It's rooted in a trauma resolution technique called the Completion Process (developed by Teal Swan), which I've adapted and refined through hundreds of sessions. But what matters isn't the name of the technique. What matters is that it works.
Here's how:
Phase 1: Find the Fragment
We start with what's active now—a pattern, trigger, or emotional reaction that's disrupting your life.
This becomes the doorway.
Maybe it's anxiety about a social event. Or rage that feels disproportionate. Or the impulse to sabotage a relationship that's going well.
We don't analyze it. We feel it. We track where it lives in your body. We follow the sensation.
And that sensation—that felt sense—leads us directly to the fragmented part that's holding it.
Phase 2: Access the Memory
As we follow the emotion inward, a memory surfaces. Or sometimes just a felt-sense impression—a knowing without images.
This is the moment the part fragmented. The moment it split off to survive something unbearable.
We don't force anything. We follow your body. We follow what arises naturally.
And then we guide you to re-experience it. Not intellectually. Not from a distance. But somatically—in your body, in first person, as the child (or younger self) who experienced it.
This is crucial: you're not just remembering. You're allowing yourself to fully feel what you couldn't feel then.
Phase 3: Meet the Part With What It Needed
Now comes the healing.
We bring your adult self into the memory. Not to change what happened, but to give that younger part what it desperately needed and didn't have.
Presence. Protection. Validation. Someone to say: What's happening to you is wrong. You didn't deserve this. I see you. I'm here.
We let that part express everything it couldn't express then. The rage. The terror. The grief. The longing.
We meet its needs. We create safety. We show it that it's no longer alone.
And slowly—sometimes quickly, sometimes over multiple sessions—relief comes.
Phase 4: Integration
Once the part feels safe, seen, and cared for, we offer it a choice:
Do you want to stay in this healed memory? Or do you want to come with me (your adult self) into the present?
If it chooses to come with you, we guide it into what I call a Safe Haven—an internal space of complete safety and nourishment. We close the door on the traumatic memory. We create distance between past and present.
And then, when it's ready, that part merges back into you.
This is integration.
Not understanding. Not managing. Not coping.
Wholeness.
The part that was exiled comes home. And with it comes everything it was holding—vitality, creativity, aliveness, power, truth.
My Story: Why This Work Saved My Life
I'm going to be very direct with you: I don't think I'd be alive today if I hadn't found this work.
And if I were still alive, I'm certain I'd be emotionally and mentally crippled—trapped in self-destructive patterns, cut off from love and connection, disconnected from purpose, joy, and meaning.
I spent years trying to fix myself. Trying to be good enough, healed enough, radiant enough. To be someone who didn't feel shame, or anxiety, or like a fraud.
I tried to rise above my trauma. To transcend it. To understand it so well that it would lose its power.
But nothing really changed.
Not until I learned how to go toward it. How to meet the wound. How to walk back into the moments where parts of me froze—and sit with them. Be with them.
The Completion Process became the path I walked through my own fire, over and over again.
It brought me back to myself. To my body. To my capacity to feel. To a sense of being rooted and whole, even when life is hard.
It's been a journey from trying to fix symptoms to healing root causes. From wanting to feel good to being willing to feel. From asking "what's wrong with me" to asking "what happened to me."
And out of all the frameworks I've explored—meditation, therapy, plant medicine, shadow work—this remains the most powerful tool I've found for actually transforming the parts of me that were stuck in the past.
It's not the only tool I use. But it's the one that can reach the darkest places in consciousness.
The places where talk therapy can't go. Where meditation can't reach. Where understanding alone falls short.
I've come to see this process not as a technique, but as a natural human function we've forgotten how to use.
Like digestion. Like sleep.
We need it to reclaim our freedom, our joy, our ability to create the lives we actually want.
Real People, Real Healing: Client Stories
Johanna: From Abandonment to Safety in Connection
Johanna came to me anxious about attending a dinner where her ex would be present. On the surface, it seemed like typical social discomfort.
But through integration work, we discovered something deeper.
As she sat with her anxiety, memories surfaced: her mother abruptly leaving the room whenever the phone rang. That younger version of her felt abandoned and powerless—and this old pain was echoing in the anticipation of seeing her ex.
We guided Johanna back into that childhood moment. Instead of leaving her alone like her mother once did, Johanna met her younger self with presence, reassurance, and connection.
She offered her inner child the very experience she needed back then: safety in togetherness.
From that reconnection, a clear insight emerged: what would make this part of her feel safe was to not go through the dinner alone.
So we co-created a plan. She'd spend time with a close friend beforehand, go to the dinner with them, check in during the evening, and come home together.
As a result, Johanna felt grounded and confident. Her inner child no longer felt abandoned. She enjoyed the evening, reconnected with friends, and even spoke to her ex without fear or overwhelm.
Since then, Johanna has felt safer in social settings. She stopped feeling anxious about seeing her ex. She became skilled at asking for—and receiving—support from friends. She started trusting that connection could be reliable and safe.
Most beautifully, she felt secure dating again. Because she was no longer abandoning the child within her—they were navigating relationships together, in partnership.
Noah: Reclaiming Power From Ancestral Patterns
Noah was struggling to make money despite being highly intelligent, deeply skilled, and fully committed to his business. Clients appeared in waves, then vanished. Something invisible was blocking stability and abundance.
I asked him: "What's between you and a continuous flow of clients, financial abundance, and the fulfillment of your dreams?"
He immediately felt a dense, constricting sensation in his stomach and diaphragm. As he stayed with it, flashbacks surfaced—extreme emotional and physical abuse from his father.
The violence, combined with his mother's inability to protect him, had planted deep imprints: The world is not safe. I must never become like my father.
This second belief caused Noah to subconsciously reject any qualities that resembled his father—assertiveness, leadership, strength, self-assurance.
In rejecting those parts of himself, Noah had also rejected his ability to protect and provide for himself.
Over six months, we worked through layers using integration. We created healing for the parts of Noah he'd abandoned to emotionally survive.
Gradually, he reclaimed his personal power. He discovered that the qualities he feared could be expressed with integrity and care.
As healing deepened, Noah saw the broader pattern: his father had been wounded by his father, and so on for generations. The violence wasn't just personal—it was ancestral.
He realized he wasn't merely a victim of his father. He was that lineage. And from that awareness, he could take ownership not only of the abuse he'd suffered, but also of the abuse the lineage had perpetuated.
This required Noah to expand his sense of self to include the whole field of ancestral consciousness—rather than projecting darkness solely onto his father.
Something shifted. Noah stopped pushing away his ancestry and started owning it. He chose to channel that energy into connection, joy, clarity, and service.
He became the first man in his family line to consciously choose how he wanted to direct his ancestral energy.
Today, Noah is thriving. He no longer feels the world is unsafe. He no longer fears his own strength. He's attracting clients consistently and experiencing financial abundance—not because he "fixed" something, but because he reclaimed himself.
Jules: When the Body Speaks What Words Can't
Jules had persistent eczema on his face and neck that flared during stress or emotional instability.
Rather than treating symptoms, we approached the rash as a messenger. I guided him to connect with the consciousness of the inflamed skin.
Frustration and resentment rose to the surface. At first, Jules thought these feelings were resistance to the process itself. But he chose to stay with the discomfort.
With reassurance that nothing he could feel or express would lead to rejection, Jules slowly opened to the intensity.
What he uncovered: a deep belief that expressing his truth, anger, or needs would lead to destruction. That speaking up could cause catastrophe—and it would be his fault.
Two distinct inner parts emerged. One felt small, terrified, alone—convinced no one would protect him. The other held smoldering rage—resentment toward caregivers for crossing his boundaries, for not listening, for never asking what he needed.
We gave both parts validation, voice, and safety they'd never known.
Over time, Jules reclaimed his right to express needs and set boundaries. As he practiced this in his relationships, his skin began to clear.
Now, whenever a flare-up begins, Jules recognizes it as a signal: somewhere, he's silencing himself again.
His partner, attuned to this pattern, will sometimes gently ask: "Is there something you're not saying?"
Full flare-ups are rare now. By staying attuned to this part of himself, Jules usually hears the message before it erupts through his skin.
His skin has become a sensitive, honest ally—guiding him toward deeper connection with others and himself.
Who This Work Is For
This work is for people who feel stuck in emotional loops—no matter how much they understand themselves intellectually.
It's for people ready to go deeper than talk therapy or surface-level mindset work.
It's for people willing to feel, to take ownership of their reality, and to create change from the roots up.
Signs This May Be For You:
You have intense emotional reactions to "small" things and don't know why.
You feel disconnected from your body, emotions, or intuition.
You keep attracting similar painful dynamics in relationships or life.
You're afraid of your feelings.
You're caught in shame, self-blame, or people-pleasing.
You sense there are parts of you still living in the past.
You feel stuck—and you're tired of bypassing or suppressing what hurts.
When It's Not a Fit
This work requires willingness to feel deeply and face the past.
If you're in active crisis, completely disconnected from internal safety, or seeking someone to fix you so you don't have to feel—we'll start by creating safety first. Both within yourself, in your life, and in your connection with me.
Often, developing a felt sense of safety in our relationship creates enough spaciousness for you to be willing to feel the scarier feelings.
How to Prepare
Come with curiosity, not pressure.
Don't try to "do it right." Trust the process and what arises within you.
Create a safe space where you won't be interrupted.
Make sure you have time to rest or integrate afterward.
Know that whatever comes up is welcome. Nothing is too much.
Why the Past Keeps Repeating (And How Healing Changes Your Future)
Most people don't realize that trauma isn't stored in the past.
It's alive in the present. In your behavior. In your reactions. In your emotional body.
Until you meet it, it will keep running the show.
Because when you dissociate from a part of yourself, you're not in relationship with it. And anything you're not in relationship with, you can't transform.
So your system keeps trying to get your attention, recreating the same dynamic that hurt you in the first place.
Not to punish you. But so you can come back.
This is the call of your emotional fragments—the parts that froze in time. Because they were never resolved, they keep seeking resolution.
They need you to come back. To listen. To feel. To include them in your inner world again.
Only through reconnection can you stop unconsciously repeating the past and start consciously creating something new.
I often think of trauma like a bone that broke and was never set correctly. You adapt around it, but the root pain remains—informing you that something needs attention.
When you try to use your body in a way that requires a healed bone and fail, you might think: "What's wrong with me?"
But the right question—the one that changes everything—is: "What happened to me?"
As you realize you have an injury that needs healing (not a fundamental flaw), you have a choice. You can change your current reality by healing this injury.
By doing this, you're bringing yourself closer to yourself. And you'll be creating a future that reflects self-alignment and connection to your intrinsic worth—instead of a future reflective of self-disconnection and self-doubt.
The Completion Process is the precise work of tending to that fracture.
Not by forcing it to heal. But by going back to the moment it broke. And gently, carefully, with presence and love—giving it what it needed.
It's a way to meet what got stuck so it can move again.
It's a path back to you.
In This Universe, Life Is a Reflection of Your Relationship With Yourself
The parts of you that you're disconnected from will mirror themselves as distance between you and the things you most want and care about.
Re-owning the parts of yourself you had to disown isn't just about inner wholeness—it's about becoming whole in your external life too.
When you're willing to feel and be present with all of who you are, all of life becomes more available to you.
I call this an internal attunement system. An intrinsic part of our operating system.
It's an incredibly intelligent design—the fact that we can dissociate and disown parts of ourselves to survive the unbearable.
But it's just as intelligent, just as natural, that we're able to reconnect with those parts once we're safe. So we can stop surviving and start truly living.
If we want lives that are full and complete, we need to be in connection and in continual movement of completion with ourselves—even (or especially) the parts buried in the subconscious that are keeping us stuck in the experiences we want to change.
This Isn't Just Personal Work—It's Social Responsibility
Without the capacity to retrieve and integrate our fragmented parts, we're left with only half of our survival technology: the part that fragments and suppresses to cope with pain.
What's missing is the other half—the capacity to return to ourselves, re-integrate what we've exiled, and reclaim wholeness.
This isn't just a personal issue. It's collective.
Most people today are living in states of inner disconnection—cut off from essential emotions, memories, needs, aspects of identity.
To the degree we're fragmented within, we're limited in our capacity to form genuine, empathic relationships with others.
And when self-connection breaks down, so does our ability to care.
Empathy and compassion aren't optional traits. They're the bedrock of healthy connection, community, and progress.
Without access to them, we react from fear, control, and shame deflection. We slip into narcissism, projection, emotional bypassing—relating to others from rejection, judgment, and disconnection.
In that state, we can't take loving ownership of our well-being—or anyone else's.
That's why this work matters.
It's not just inner work. It's social responsibility.
Every time you choose to reconnect with a lost part of yourself, you're casting a vote for the kind of humanity you want to live in.
You're saying: "I will not participate in a world built on suppression, disconnection, and survival alone."
We can't build a harmonious future if we're still at war with ourselves.
Re-connection is how we recover our humanity—person by person, part by part.
The Power of Turning Toward Pain Instead of Away
In a world that teaches us to numb, bypass, or outrun our pain, turning toward it feels counter-intuitive—even terrifying.
But something profound happens when you stop fighting your inner world and instead meet it with presence and curiosity.
Pain is not your enemy. It's a messenger—often the part of you that didn't get to speak when it needed to.
Through integration work, you learn to listen. To witness. To bring love to the places inside you that have long felt abandoned or exiled.
This kind of turning toward doesn't make life magically easy. Sometimes it does—but often it feels worse before it feels better.
But it makes you more whole. More honest. More alive.
You reclaim pieces of yourself you didn't even realize you'd lost.
And from that place of integration, you begin to feel the ground of your being again—not as a concept, but as a felt experience.
If You're Ready
If you resonate with this, or if something inside you is asking to be seen—you don't have to walk this path alone.
I offer 1:1 sessions where we gently and safely explore what's arising for you using integration work, shadow work, and somatic practices.
Each session is a co-creative space where all parts of you are welcome—even the ones that feel most unlovable or hard to face.
Sometimes the most courageous step is simply saying yes to being supported.
Recommended Resources on the Completion Process:
The Completion Process book by Teal Swan
Healing Doesn't Have to Be About Effort or Striving
It can be about remembering what you already know deep down: how to feel, how to be with yourself, and how to come home.
If any part of this spoke to you, this path is open.
You don't have to keep fixing yourself. You don't have to keep pretending you're okay.
There's a place where all of you is welcome.
And it's not far.
It's inside you, waiting to be found again.
This is the work I do.
I would be honored to walk with you and support you in walking toward yourself.
