When the Pain Is Too Much: A Reflection on Exiles in Parts Work

Sometimes when a client is in deep pain—or when something in me feels a way I can’t quite name—I think about the exile parts.

In Internal Family Systems (IFS), exile parts are the ones who carry the raw, unprocessed burdens of our earliest hurts. They are the child selves that hold the grief, the shame, the terror, the heartbreak. They were often overwhelmed at a time when there was no one to co-regulate, no one to protect, no one to help them understand what was happening. So they got pushed away. “Exiled.” Not because they were bad, but because they felt too much.

And that’s the paradox: these parts hold the very wounds we most need to heal in order to grow, but they are also the parts we often most fear contacting. They're the reason protectors exist—the hyper-vigilant managers and explosive firefighters that try to keep the exiles hidden away. In this way, our systems become organized around not feeling. But feelings don’t go away just because we suppress them. They go underground. And they wait.

When I encounter an exiled part in myself or in a client, I try to remember that I am touching something sacred. Exiles are the most tender, most vulnerable expressions of the self. Often they are frozen in time, still waiting for someone to come back for them. And in IFS work—we get that chance. We can go back. We can meet them and ask them to tell us their stories. Not with a barrage of judgements or the demand to “move on,” but with presence. With gentleness. With compassion. With care.

Sometimes the exile parts have been alone for so long, they don’t trust our presence right away. That’s okay. Trust isn’t a prerequisite; it’s a process. And our willingness to stay—without trying to fix or explain—can begin to melt the ice.

Working with exiles is delicate work. It’s work that asks us to slow down, to listen beneath the noise of everyday functioning. But the gifts they hold are profound. Creativity, intuition, joy, sensitivity, passion—all often live right beside the pain. When we can welcome these parts in, we don’t just heal the past—we reclaim pieces of our wholeness.

There’s a reason we exiled them. And there’s a reason we go back.