Parts and Pillow Talk
by Jamie Reaser

...that is what learning is.
You suddenly understand something
you’ve understood all your life, but
in a new way.
Doris Lessing

Point’s Health Practitioner Certification course a “parts conflict” (Andreas and Andreas 1989) became apparent. On one hand (the right), I wanted security (enough income to pay the mortgage etc.), professional credibility (the scientist’s “publish or perish” syndrome and the policy maker’s “power” syndrome), and to be a well accepted member of a community of friends and colleagues. On the other hand (the left), I wanted to follow my mission (to heal the relationships between people and the environment), have a greater connection to Spirit, be more creative and free of cultural expectations, and love myself and others more deeply.

I was at a crossroads. My government appointed position would end in a few months and I needed to decide what to do next.

Time to resolve the conflict within the last hours of the course was not available. I returned home, feeling a bit daunted by what had come into my consciousness and, yet, confident that I had all the resources I needed to work it through.

My first few nights at home were restless. I tossed and turned, tying bed sheets into knots, untying them, and retying them again in another direction. At first, I attributed my state to the “reentry” process that frequently follows NLP courses, and largely ignored what was happening. “Ah, it’ll go away. It’ll pass.” So I told myself.

It didn’t. I tossed and turned for several nights to follow.

Early one morning, exhausted from lack of sleep, I finally remembered that I know NLP.

As soon I stepped into meta–position to look at the situation, a pattern was evident:

When I tried to sleep on my right side, my mind was accessing the pictures, sounds, and feelings associated with the right side of my conflict. When I tried to sleep on my left side, I was accessing pictures, sounds, and feelings associated with the left side of my conflict. When I lay on my back or stomach, I felt frazzled, “pulled apart.” My tossing and turning was no less than a war of parts.

“Cool!” I found myself more interested in the pattern than the conflict itself. Could sleep disorders, particularly those characterized by tossing and turning, be the manifestation of parts conflicts?

I thought back through the periods in my life when I had experienced insomnia. I had suffered Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS) to varying degrees from 1991–1997. During that time, my life seemed like a long chain of daily exhaustion, nightly restlessness, and daily exhaustion. (My poor apartment mates never knew how the furniture would be arranged in the morning.)

People with CFIDS often have difficulties falling and staying asleep. Sleep is light and typified by vivid, colorful dreams. The dreams are memorable. Often, even people with CFIDS who have significant memory and concentration problems can recall their dreams in astonishing detail (Stoff and Pellegrino 1988).

If my memory serves well, many of the dreams associated with my CFIDS experience could rightly be classified as expressions of “internal conflicts” or “parts wars.” This is also true of dreams belonging to the restless nights I’ve had since making the initial observation that my bed was a battlefield in play.

When faced with a “restlessness” night, I now negotiate. I pillow talk with my parts. I ask all of them to notice how much easier it is to work through conflicts and move forward energetically when the body and mind are well rested. I ask my subconscious to bring Spirit or another appropriate negotiator to the conflict and to proceed gently as I sleep. I don’t need to know what the conflict is about or which parts are involved. I thank all of my parts, as if proceeding through a celebratory prayer. I take a few deep breaths and let go of consciousness.
In the morning I awake well rested, energized, and congruent.

Could sleep disorders, particularly those characterized by tossing and turning, be the manifestation of parts conflicts? I don’t have a definitive answer to offer the NLP community. It was my venture to share only observations, questions, and curiosity. I hope the curiosity is contagious. Here lies projects for future students of Anchor Point’s Health Certification Training and members of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Health (IASH).

Sweet dreams. Sleep well.

Post Script: Jamie did work through her parts conflict. That experience, and a new pattern that emerged from it, will be featured in a future Anchor Point article entitled “The Pyramid of Self–Spirit Alignment.”

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