What are subpersonalities in psychology: how to work with them, and why is it needed?

Each person is a multifaceted personality in which different parts live. In psychology, these parts are usually called subpersonalities. These are psychological formations that include a person’s feelings, beliefs and behavior patterns.

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In simple words, subpersonality is a person’s second self, or his alternative personality. Sometimes there may be several such selves. They are created by the subconscious to perform certain tasks or fulfill a specific role in society.

You've probably witnessed an internal conflict at least once. Did you argue with yourself? Did you make one decision at first and then change it? Did you feel like you were being tossed from side to side?

This confirms the presence of subpersonalities.

It is important to remember that subpersonalities are the norm, not a pathology. Many selves make up the inner world of a person. These selves help protect the main self and satisfy desires and needs. But it is important to work on subpersonalities in order to prevent them from completely seizing control.

In this article:

Why human subpersonalities are dangerousHow subpersonalities ariseTypes of subpersonalitiesManifestations of subpersonalities in lifeWorking with subpersonalities

Definition of the concept of subpersonality in psychology

The concept of human subpersonality was introduced by the Italian psychologist and psychiatrist R. Assagioli. In psychology, it is customary to use the following definition of subpersonality, it was given by Asagioli: “This is a certain set of attitudes, behavioral stereotypes, beliefs, drives, etc., which takes on a holistic, discernible form only in our consciousness.”

Have you noticed that you sometimes react differently to the same events? Why do you behave differently in similar conditions? This is how other selves manifest themselves. They find expression in our actions, words, actions, thoughts, qualities, abilities, skills. They are associated with social roles and statuses. Each person plays many roles. Sometimes they come into conflict; at such moments we turn to ourselves, talk to ourselves, or rather, to alternative personalities.

Interesting! The term “subpersonality” in psychology is a psychological metaphor that psychologists use to simplify and shorten the description of a certain set of habits, beliefs, and personality traits. In addition to internal changes, when changing subpersonalities, external changes are also noticeable. A person's posture, tone of voice, speed of speech, facial expressions and gestures may change.

Subpersonalities are not a pathology, but a norm. The inner world of a person consists of many selves. They help satisfy needs and desires, protect the main self. A completely logical question arises: if this is normal and even good, then why does psychology pay so much attention to this phenomenon, why is it so important to work on subpersonalities? Let's understand everything in order.

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Why work with them?

Alternative personalities can live peacefully, or they can harm each other and enter into conflicts. We need to work on this so that a person controls his subpersonalities, and not they control him. It is also important to ensure that all alternative selves coexist in harmony. If some kind of “I” harms a person and his environment, then this subpersonality needs to be gotten rid of.

Remember! Working with subpersonalities is necessary so that they do not get out of control.

Rationalization

Miscalculations, mistakes and other people's opinions hurt when they resonate with negative identities from the unconscious, as if they force you to admit what a nonentity you are. In this vein, even neutral observations about someone else can suddenly cause resentment and anger simply because they touch old wounds.

Positive assessments are pleasing for a similar reason - when they give subpersonalities confident in their right to recognition and love a chance to wake up and come into force.

Resonance with the situation connects a specific role, which seems to be inherent in the behavior occurring. Failure brings out the inner loser, success is the darling of fate. At the same time, the next subpersonality initially functions in complete isolation from the actions that it ascribes to itself, and arises as a subsequent mental reaction to these actions - a rationalization of what has already happened. That is, first the behavior is implemented and only after that an image of oneself arises in the consciousness, which takes this behavior personally.

Imagine a writer who has created two independent stories - in one he depicts a self-satisfied “sinner” who considers himself to be a righteous man, in the next - a repentant righteous man who suddenly realizes that he is the sinner from the first story. Both personalities are fake and miss the main thing - their own source - the space of the creative mind in which they arose.

This is how the appearance of a false unity of contradictory subpersonalities is maintained. What unites them is only the “canvas” on which they replace each other.

Why are human subpersonalities dangerous?

I think, having reached this point in the article, you have already asked the question: “Where is the fine line between the norm and pathologies in the form of dissociative identity disorder (split personality disorder)?” Yes, this is why alternative selves are dangerous: they can absorb a person’s true self. Moreover, mental disorder is an extreme variant of complications.

There is another danger: a person does not lose touch with reality, but there are so many alternative personalities that they lead the individual further and further from himself, lead him astray from the true path, and prevent him from finding his purpose. Simply put, a person lives according to someone else’s scenario and cannot fully realize himself.

Therefore, it is so important to bring this to the level of awareness and control the process, be able to switch from one personality to another, understand why you need each of them, when they come in handy, etc.

Remember! There are useful and negative subpersonalities. The former help a person in development, the latter hinder the development of personality.

What does this give?

There is good news for the training participants: any subpersonality, any quality in yourself can be developed. And moreover, create a harmonious ensemble from subpersonalities, a combination of qualities that will excite the minds, delight, excite, inspire and inspire the men who find themselves next to you. And not only your husbands and lovers, but also those men who are your friends, business partners, your managers and subordinates.

To diagnose and correct the situation, we will use the method of structural arrangements. In the arrangement we will look at how subpersonalities interact with each other. It may turn out that some of them look weak and undeveloped. Others, on the contrary, occupy all the space. You can immediately find out the reasons for this condition. For example, in a woman’s parental family, it was not customary to show sexuality, and talking about sex was condemned. And therefore, in today’s situation, a woman has locked up not only the sexual energies necessary to communicate with a man, but also the creative energies necessary for her career and development. After identifying the causes of the problem, negative attitudes and beliefs can be returned to where they came from, put things in order, and put everything in its place. And free yourself for a new creative and successful life.

Of course, we will not be able to make arrangements for all participants. You must register for your arrangement in advance. But everyone else will have no less fun: they will be able to ask questions, participate in discussions, and see how limiting beliefs are formed.

How do human subpersonalities arise?

All alternative selves are puzzled by the same thing - protecting the inner child. Actually, this is how they arise. They protect the child from the negative influence of the external environment, help to develop and achieve goals.

Psychologist S. Schwartz described step by step the mechanism of the emergence of alternative selves:

1. A person receives psychological trauma, subpersonalities arise to protect him from negative feelings and emotions: fear, shame, guilt, pain. They are called exiles.
2. A manager appears to control the exile. He tries with all his might to protect a person from negativity. For example, if pain and disappointment in the mother have been expelled, then the manager can protect the person with the help of emotional coldness, detachment from people, and distrust.
3. Sometimes managers fail to cope, a person again finds himself in an unpleasant situation, then firefighters - another group of subpersonalities - resort to extinguishing all these feelings. They choose the most aggressive methods and do everything to numb the pain. This is how alcohol, promiscuity, extreme sports, rage, rudeness, etc. burst into a person’s life.

Not only does the person himself unconsciously create other selves, this process can be made conscious. A psychologist can create subpersonalities to help a client cope with a current problem. A person himself can create subpersonalities that improve the quality of his life.

Important! The development of other selves depends on the personality characteristics and imagination of a person. The number and specificity of alternative selves differs from case to case; each individual has his own set of subpersonalities.

Conflict and reconciliation

Reconciling the inner child and the inner parent does not mean that the inner child must finally conform to the rules and beliefs of the inner parent. Most of us already know how to do this quite well.

Most of us have an inner parent inside us who is not very good at caring for the needs of the inner child.

This inner parent focuses more on the ego, that is, how to please others in order to feel needed, or how to achieve success or more recognition.

All this makes the inner parent happy, but not for long. There is always a feeling of dissatisfaction, regardless of the degree of achievement, because the needs of the inner child were not satisfied.

The relationship between parents and their children is always complex. Some of us may feel resentment towards our parents.

We may feel upset because our parents control or criticize us.

But at the same time, we feel some guilt for such feelings, since our parents raised us and we love them.

to have mixed feelings about your parents . If your parents have always ignored your needs, resentment will inevitably arise.

The same is true for the relationship between your inner child and inner parent.

Those who have difficulty identifying the needs of their inner child end up irritating their inner parent, which in turn leads to self-blame.

The inner child feels angry and stressed because he is being forced to do something he does not want or feels he cannot do.

He blames the inner parent for not taking his feelings into account and choosing to please other people and social demands.

However, the inner child is always right and you must do whatever it asks.

None of the types of subpersonalities is absolutely right.

The inner child may be reckless in its desires, but its feelings must still be acknowledged. You need to listen to both sides before making a decision.

To live in peace, you need to listen to both the inner parent and the inner child.

To achieve inner peace, it is necessary to reconcile these two different points of view. You cannot push any of them away or be violent.

Otherwise, one of the parties will be unhappy.

That's why you need your true self, your spiritual essence, the source of love - to listen to both sides from a neutral position.

It is not enough to simply heal your inner child. Our inner parent must change too.

He must learn how to properly protect the inner child and care for it and its needs.

When our inner parent fails to fulfill its obligations, the inner child remains unprotected from external circumstances.

This leads to the fact that we begin to act unconsciously under the influence of these feelings, that is, just like a child.

If you compare your current moral standards with those you had as a child, have they changed much? Or do you still use the same moral standards?

Those people whose parents were cruel, critical and controlling, sometimes find themselves in similar relationships with others.

As children, we were too weak to protect ourselves. Our parents determined our lives and made decisions for us.

As children, we couldn't do much except find our own way to deal with a given situation.

And although we found ways to help us survive childhood, some of us accepted such methods as the norm.

Sometimes we find it difficult to leave unhealthy relationships because we are so used to finding ways to deal with them that it has also developed a tolerance for the wrong behavior of others.

Sometimes we don't realize that something is wrong in our relationships until they get worse.

Unlike people who did not have such negative childhood experiences, we stay in unwanted relationships more often and longer than we should.

We have grown and matured. As adults, we are able to protect ourselves from harm, but this does not mean that we have changed on the inside.

To guide the inner child, our inner parent uses the same techniques as many years ago.

Most of us have not updated our internal standards and therefore we treat others the same way we once treated our parents, thereby constantly hurting our inner child.

Are you taking good care of your own needs? Do you give easily and have difficulty receiving? If you have a constant need to please others and seek their approval, think about whether one of your parents, or maybe both of them, had similar traits. You could copy these internal standards from them.

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Types of subpersonalities

In psychology, it is customary to distinguish conscious (clear) and unconscious (shadow) subpersonalities:

1. Explicit. These are the roles, qualities, statuses, programs with which a person identifies himself: “I am a father,” “I am a very patient person,” etc.
2. Shadow. These are those scenarios that a person is not aware of, but they constantly guide him through life: “I don’t know what came over me,” “Sometimes I break down for no reason,” “Sometimes I feel so bad that I can’t get out of bed.” . I don’t know why this happens.”

The union of obvious and shadow subpersonalities is usually called a conciliar personality. As a rule, a person associates this image with his name.

In addition, we can distinguish main (among them one dominant) and auxiliary subpersonalities. Those that are basic are obvious and are included more often than others. Auxiliary ones manifest themselves from time to time, more often they are of an unconscious nature. And even less often, random subpersonalities arise. They can become fixed and turn into main or auxiliary ones.

Inner child

Many people are familiar with the inner critic, but sometimes they are less familiar with their inner child.

If you have an inner critic who constantly criticizes you, then the part of you that is criticized and hurt is your inner child.

Our inner child stores our memories and emotional pain just like a child does.

Most of us can only remember some important events from our childhood.

As we grow older, we usually push our inner child into the background, developing our subpersonality as an adult.

However, our unresolved internal painful feelings that we carried through childhood remain in our memories and body memory, whether we are aware of it or not.

Think back to a recent time when someone's words triggered an emotional reaction in you.

You may have felt upset or angry about this, or experienced some kind of bodily discomfort. Ask yourself: “Why am I so convinced that they are right?” If you rationally know that the other person is wrong, why did you still react? This is because part of you (your inner child) is convinced that this person is right.

In the early years of our lives, our brains form beliefs about ourselves, and as adults we continue to harbor our painful experiences.

As an adult, you may understand that criticism is unfair. But from the point of view of your inner child, this person is right. Ask yourself: How did I feel as a child when someone in my immediate family called me lazy, stupid, and worthless? How did I feel that my parents were constantly busy with their work and did not give me the attention I needed?

When we were children, we didn't understand why our parents treated us the way we did, and we took the blame on ourselves.

If there was no one nearby who could help us deal with our emotions, then we could not learn to cope with guilt, anger, and fear.

So we continued to carry these unvented emotions into our adult lives, forgetting that we once suffered as children.

If you're having a hard time feeling your inner child right now , that's normal.

How subpersonalities manifest themselves in life

In life, you can most often find the following list of human subpersonalities (according to the specifics of behavior and leading qualities):

• wolf – manifested by anger and aggression;
• fox - expressed in cunning, guile, flattery, etc.;
• hare - manifests itself as cowardice, numerous fears in all areas of life (and sometimes a person understands that it is high time to change something, but does not dare to do so);
• piglet - noticeable through greed in all areas of life, sometimes taking pathological forms, for example, turning into a craving for hoarding;
• ram - expressed in stupidity, inability to listen to others and perceive rational arguments, stubbornness;

• alcoholic – expressed in drunkenness and riotous lifestyle;
• glutton – manifested by systematic overeating, inability to control one’s actions, and a constant feeling of hunger;
• smoker - manifests itself in an obsessive need to smoke, coming up with reasons not to quit (“The work is stressful”, “This makes me want to eat less”, “If I quit, I’ll get fat”).

In psychology, there is no single classification of subpersonalities by name; there are thousands of them. For example, in addition to those that we have already named, there are the following:

• egoist,
• endured
• small man,
• dreamer,
• good man,
• impudent,
• holy man,
• Jonah,
• hypocrite,
• many, many others.

A person himself gives names to his subpersonalities, sometimes his environment helps him in this.

Important! Every person has at least three subpersonalities: adult, child, parent.

“Thumbelina”, aka “Cheburashka”, aka “Little Red Riding Hood”

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She is naive, romantic, dreamy. If “The Mischievous Girl” is interested in adventures and exploits, then “Thumbelina” is interested in reading poetry, walking in the moonlight, dreaming about a handsome prince, a beautiful dress and shoes. How a five-year-old girl shows off in front of the mirror in a new dress.

The problem is that sometimes this is even too naive a state. When such a “Little Red Riding Hood” meets a Gray Wolf, she says:

“Well, it’s okay. He is so brutal and strong, he has such big teeth, eyes and ears! Maybe he is my prince?

And falls into the clutches of the manipulator.

Exercises to work with subpersonalities

In psychology, there are many techniques that are suitable for independent use, helping to understand the inner selves and learn to interact with them. Let's look at some exercises for working with subpersonalities.

Talking to your inner critic

All people have this subpersonality. For some it is more pronounced, for others it is weaker, but we all periodically criticize and scold ourselves. It's good if it doesn't turn into self-flagellation. If a critic is exhausting you, then it’s time to meet and talk with him.

Draw your critic as a person. To make it easier, answer the following questions:

• What is he like?
• How and when does it manifest itself?
• How does it affect you, your decisions and actions?
• How does he react to your counterarguments and rational comments?
• What does he criticize more often: you or the world around you?

Get to know him, and then learn to communicate. The next time he starts saying that nothing will work out, ask: “What will happen if...?” If a critic forces you to do something or dissuades you from something, then ask him: “Can you cope with the consequences?” Tell him what you would like to hear in difficult times. Which of his comments will help you and not drown you in the abyss of self-flagellation.

And most importantly, think about how appropriate his criticism is, in whose voice he speaks. Very often the critic speaks in the voice of the parents, and upon analysis it turns out that most of the comments are irrational. The better you understand your critic, the better you can control him.

Circle of subpersonalities

This technique allows you to diagnose positive subpersonalities.

Technique:

1. Write down all your intangible desires. Write whatever comes to mind. You need to score at least 20 positions.
2. Re-read the list and concentrate on how you feel about each item. Maybe at one of them you heard a menacing and condemning voice: “What will people think?” Or the inspired: “How can you not want this, everyone wants it.”
3. Choose 5-6 desires that are more relevant to you than the rest.
4. On a piece of paper, draw a circle with a diameter of 20 cm, with another circle inside. The center is the real you. Place the selected 5-6 wishes in a small circle. Distribute the rest beyond the first circle and up to the second.
5. Each of your desires is a subpersonality. Draw them with colored pencils (one image for each wish), give them names. Each name should be clear and meaningful to you, make sense.
6. Think about where else, besides desires, these subpersonalities express themselves, when and how this happens.

Now you are familiar with your main positive subpersonalities. Monitor when they express themselves, promote their development.

Personal diary

Many people think that keeping a personal diary is for 12-year-old girls. But in fact, this is an excellent psychotherapeutic method available to everyone. Diaries can be different, for example, you can keep a diary of emotions and actions. Write down vivid events, especially those when you say, “I don’t understand why everything is like this.”

Analyze records. Very soon you will understand that much of your behavior, your states and reactions are not accidental, but natural. You will be able to identify several patterns of behavior. Yes, they may be directly opposite to each other, but all of this is you, or rather, these are your subpersonalities. The next step is to identify destructive models (subpersonalities) and work on them.

Internal parent

The inner parent is a subpersonality that is similar to your parents.

You've probably noticed that in many ways your internal monologue, be it criticism or praise, is often a kind of replica of what your mother, father, or both of them once told you.

Your inner child carries the wounds of your childhood, and your inner parent holds the rules about what you should and shouldn't do.

The function of the inner parent is to protect and care for the inner child. Even if you are not a parent in real life, you still have an inner parent.

From a young age, directly or indirectly, we learn from our parents how to protect ourselves from dangers and troubles, how to cope with ourselves and how to explore the world, which people or situations are bad and which are good for our growth and development.

Our parents are our role models. We learn from them how to be parents.

If your parents love themselves, but were there for you when you needed to overcome the challenges of childhood, then most likely you have learned to take care of yourself.

If your parents don’t love themselves or weren’t with you when you had to overcome difficult moments as a child, then as an adult you may not be able to stand up for yourself because you didn’t have a positive role model in front of you.

This can often be found in families where cruelty reigns.

Usually one of the parents shows cruelty, and the other does not know how to stop this cruelty.

In psychology, such a second parent is called an “indulger,” since he unwittingly makes it easier for the cruel parent to continue his rude behavior by not stopping him.

From whom do children raised in such an environment learn to defend themselves? From an abusive parent? From a person directing his anger at another? Or are they protecting the enabler, the person who encourages the cruelty to continue?

When our parents are people-pleasers who fail to meet their own needs, we also learn to put our own needs aside.

We are unable to stand up for our rights and ask for help when we need it.

We look to our parents for advice, but sometimes what they teach us does not have much practical significance.

Sometimes this is just a set of rules and rituals that were passed down in the family from our ancestors through generations.

For example, when parents tell a child not to cry or get angry, they are not acknowledging the child's feelings, although they are trying to teach him how to deal with his emotions.

Many of us learn to protect ourselves by suppressing or denying our emotions and our inner child.

But this leads to even greater conflict between the inner child and the inner parent and, in turn, can affect physical health.

Now that you understand what types of psychological subpersonalities there are, I’ve come to talk about their conflict and reconciliation.

“Auntie”, aka “Chief Accountant”

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This is a dry, cold subpersonality, prone to control. It is often presented to women by their mothers-in-law. But here the principle is the same: if a person communicates with you mainly from the position of one subpersonality, it means that you include it.

For example, the mother-in-law turns on “Auntie”: “You cooked the soup wrong, you raise your children poorly, you don’t care about your husband at all.”

And either “Auntie” or the frightened “Thumbelina” may automatically turn on for you. But you can change the subpersonality from which you communicate with your mother-in-law, and then she will change. It may seem incredible to you, but she can also turn on “Thumbelina”, or even “Naughty Girl”. It's all there too.