You're welcome =)
I think that we could write down some practical ways for M in which she could be supportive, so that she knows some of the things she could do. Like, draw something for the upset part, bake or cook something, put on a movie, ask inside if one of the older ones could please come out to help. Or perhaps I could write out a small script for her with questions she could ask and responses that would be appropriate.
That seem like really nice ideas!
Can I ask how you personally taught parts to help? Especially the young ones? Does their way of comforting end up looking a lot like your way of comforting, or is it different?
For the teens, we weren't in therapy back then, and we didn't really know what we were doing (that's why it took years to work). Recently, we started working with the young ones in therapy and we finally understood what we did.
It's basically about helping them to expend their window of tolerance. At first, we let them avoid everything related to the trauma, just comfort them and help them ground when they get intrusive manifestations because of it. Depending on how separate from the "related" ANP the EP is, it can mean comforting everyone at the same time, or first the EP then the ANP.
Then, once the alter feels safe enough around the adults, and trust them enough, the goal will be to help them "have a look" at the trauma. It can be by writing, or drawing, or anything that seems okay for them. They can do it at their own pace, start and make a pause and finish when they feel they can do it.
For the teens, it was okay, but with the young ones, this is already way too hard.
For them, our therapist suggested we start by making sure we are in a very safe place outside and inside, then, when they are ready, to just "watch" the body sensations linked to the trauma for one second, and then go back to the safe place inside. Then, once it's totally fine with the 1 second, to do it for 2 seconds. Then 3 seconds, etc.
And even that isn't easy. With one of our young ones, we could do only 2 sessions of 1s before he asked to stop ; then, we spend the rest of the hour talking about something else with our therapist. Also, even if we're used to working on our own, it asks for a lot of focus, and we are only doing that under the supervision of our T (this is to say :
do not try it alone!).
All of this helps them see that nothing terrible happens when it just "cross our mind", that having the memory of it doesn't equal being overwhelmed, and they start building a bit of confidence. It also helps to reduce the fear of the other parts (all of our ANP started avoidant of their related EPs).
For the teens (we're far from here with the young ones), after they started being comfortable enough to draw or write, they also mentioned it a bit to some of our close friends we really trust. Having someone outside that recognize it was horrible but doesn't make a drama out of what we lived helps a lot to see that, even if it's important, it's not
that of a big deal. It's kind of like when a child is more scared by the fact their parents are scared than by the thing itself, but in reverse. Seeing someone that isn't over-emotional about it helps realize it's in the past and can't really hurt us anymore.
At this step, our teens stopped being totally avoidant of the trauma and the EPs, and were more confident about their ability to handle the intrusions and the EP related to it. During all the process, they had slowly grown and became young adults. At some point, we just encouraged them to imitate the adults, and to try to take care of their EPs.
They started by doing little things. For one ANP, the only thing he could really handle at first was to stay close and not run away from consciousness while I was helping one of his related EP. Then, they started to do more and more. Now, for most of them, it takes a really big trigger to destabilize them to the point they need the help of another adult. We all have the same way of dealing with EPs and young ones inside, and when it's about doing outside things to help with comfort and grounding, it depends on what they like (watching a film, cooking something nice, drawing, etc.).
At some point, some of the most autonomous teens/young adults also spontaneously started to help comfort the young ones when they could. None of the adults asked for it, it just felt natural. Some who are less autonomous want to help too, but are still a bit uncomfortable, mostly because they are intimidated by young children and scared to do something wrong. They're slowly learning by watching how we do it and helping a bit when they feel it's something they can do. Sometimes, it means saying something nice, other times, it's by letting the young ones being co-cons when they do something fun, etc.
Hope it helps!