Comics

In addition to writing dialogues with inner parts, I frequently converse with parts through hastily sketched comics.

Drawing a picture of a symptom or part reveals a lot about its nature and qualities. Text keeps a verbal channel open at the same time, so I understand intellectually what's taking place. The comic-book like format allows me to see how the interaction evolves, like storyboards from a movie. 

Below, you can look at a comic strip dialogue I sketched to illustrate this process tool.

Maybe you'll be inspired to start or return to this practice too. Enjoy!

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I start with some figure to be "me". This Me is typically the moderator of the conversation, the one who decides and leads.

In the next image you see an Inner Child. Child parts usually want to play, get hugs, or shake the ordinary "Me" consciousness out of some dry, boring mental state.

Next you see us interacting with another part, a shadow figure. In this case, the shadow part is visualized as a gooey creature radiating desperate need for love, attention, kindness, care, and patience. 

A tyrant part is pictured next. Tyrants were originally tasked with the job of keeping us safe from ridicule, rejection, abandonment or attack by our family, upon whose protection and usually rather conditional love we depended for our physical and psychological survival. They did this by brutally suppressing anything arising in us which was not desired by our families. Without our tyrants, we might not have made it this far. To make sure we abide by the rules of what's lovable and what's not in our local universe, Tyrants use whatever works on us to get us to behave: shame, guilt, fear, punishment, manipulation.

In the next picture you can see Sphinx, the Guardian protector figure after whom LionSong is named. She appears to me in variations of the image of a gigantic white lioness. I experience her as an emanation of pristine, untamed, beautiful, elegant wilderness. She is at once distinct from me and part of me (better said, I am part of her). She springs from the most pure, wild Source within me and is supremely loving. She is the perfect Guardian for me, (one of many) but each person has their own (if they want some).

Next I illustrate how you could start a dialogue in the cartoon format. If I wake up feeling depressed, obsessed or in some other way out of sorts, I ask myself to draw a picture of what's going on.

In the example below, my malaise is feeling bad about myself, caused (the picture reveals) by the presence of a negative voice talking to me. The image shows that I'm not completely sure it's nonsense and lies - I'm kind of listening to this part.

Next, Inner Child comes for some hugs, because she is feeling the emotional pain of what this part is saying as painful vibrations in her little body, like children often do.  

Inner Child helps me remember that I don't want to listen to this negative voice for much longer because it traumatizes and stresses my more vulnerable parts. I call on Sphinx for some help. 

Sphinx speaks to the voice on my behalf, and gets it to quiet down by hearing its concern. The negative voice, a Tyrant figure, was alerting us to the danger of revealing our weirdness through this comic, which risks rejection and ridicule (two things Tyrants are made to deeply fear.)

Maybe the cartoon dialogue style appeals to you too. In the end, no matter what channels you like best for following your process to help get to know your nature, the most important thing is to follow what spontaneously arises and aim for being calm, compassionate, and curious* as you do. Have fun! 

*Richard Schwartz, creator of the Internal Family Systems model, also known as Parts Work, writes about these "three Cs" generating the best attitude for getting to know Parts.

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Thumbnail image reverently appropriated from Ruth Heller's Animals Born Alive and Well.