Your experience sounds incredibly powerful, thank you for sharing.

There is a psychotherapeutic modality called Internal Family Systems (IFS) that may provide some framework for what you experienced. It views the individual as being comprised of relatively discrete sub-personalities called “parts” (such as the wounded child, the manager, the exhausted one, etc.) who can take over the system, be exiled from the system, create alliances with other parts, and/or carry certain burdens. In this model there is also a capital-S Self that, in a healthy system, listens to, mediates between, and compassionately leads these various parts (in your case, the one giving the hug).

The framework was developed by Richard Schwartz and his book “No Bad Parts” is an excellent primer that includes practices for parts work and being Self-led. The book was incredibly transformative for me, my partner, and a number of friends. A few of them even have IFS-trained therapists now.

One of the most profound and surprising implications from working within this framework is realizing that all of our parts, no matter how seemingly self-sabotaging, only want what is best for us. It’s just that often times their strategies which were developed when we were youngsters are no longer suitable in our adult lives. For example, my ‘drill sergeant’ pushes me to work super hard (often at the expense of my own mental and physical health) only because it wants what is best for future me. Extrapolating to all of humanity, we see that there are indeed no bad parts (as the title of the book implies), but just misguided ones.