Parts Mapping

Externalizing the internal: drawing or listing your Parts so you can see the whole system.

Description

Mapping clarifies who is on stage and who is in the background. You note names/descriptions, roles, beliefs, ways of seeing the world, triggers, relationships, alliances. The goal isn’t accuracy, it’s perspective; and parts that get written down tend to settle a little, apparently just from having been noticed.

Paper beats software for this, in our experience. We have no principled reason for it, and one of us has genuinely bad handwriting.

We wrote about it in Mapping and tracking your parts. Lifemapping is the variant that starts from a situation instead of from your parts.

What Parts Mapping is NOT:

Not a permanent taxonomy, and not a diagnosis. The map is a snapshot of a system that moves — if yours hasn’t changed in a year, that is worth being curious about rather than proud of. Also not for mapping other people’s parts, however tempting.

Examples:

Sketching your “board of directors” and noticing who never speaks.
Colour-coding protectors and exiles to see who is guarding whom.
Re-drawing it a month later and finding that two parts were one part.

see also:

Parts Work; Self-Leadership; Polarization; Trailheads; Inner Alignment