Parenting Your Inner Child

 

Each of us has multiple selves inside. Rather than being the differing personalities sometimes reflected in Multiple Personality Disorder, these selves are part of our childhood, young adult and fully adult experiences. We become fully integrated as a whole personality when we are able to acknowledge each of these sometimes conflicting voices, allowing the fully adult self to wisely parent the less experienced voices in a loving way. The parenting adult self can only obtain the wisdom of its full adulthood by acknowledging and embracing the experiences of these younger manifestations of self.

Many of us never develop our fully adult selves, remaining for one or more reasons under the predominant influence of a younger self. Others develop the fully adult self only following considerable self-examination much later in life. Some of us in contrast have a relatively smooth progression through the personality development stages represented by these selves.

I was one of the second group as far as I am able to tell. My child voice maintained a somewhat controlling role in my expression at times of stress, while my young adult self acted as guide with immature wisdom, impatiently chiding and criticizing the child self after the fact for its emotional outbursts during stress. Needless to say, this young adult would be heroic self ended up with quite a load of guilt to manage.

This young adult self was filled with a sense of inadequacy and therefore refused to accept assistance from anyone around. More significantly, it refused to acknowledge the inner child at all. This self knew its childhood had been painful and it did not want to return there at all cost. Insecurity and inadequacy meant that to acknowledge the inner child voice might cause the young adult self to lose its emancipation and be trapped once again in the morass of childhood experience. The young adult self would attempt an outward show that everything was fine, even appearing to be wise to many people so long as it could avoid being caught out. Secretly it always feared detection not because it was trying to deceive, but because it didn't want its inadequacies discovered. In short, it was and still is a typical bright, self assertive teenager.

My visits home once I had escaped that confining nest outwardly reflected this inner dilemma, though I failed to understand it at the time. I would feel fully adult in my college, early professional and then marriage environment only to feel myself pulled entirely back into my childhood set of emotions and behaviors once I had been back in the home environment for only a day or two. Indeed the struggle between new-found adulthood and re-imposed childhood emotional constraints began almost as soon as I would arrive home. I was gradually able to postpone the change as I grew older, but it took quite a time before I succeeded in making the change from an almost immediate sense of claustrophobia at being in the home environment again to a more developed state where I could postpone this suffocating feeling for at least a few days.

I only became aware a few years ago that I was not operating from a fully adult perspective. I was already well into my fifties by then. Counseling sessions with someone encouraging me to listen to myself with compassion and to acknowledge the younger selves within me needing expression and understanding, coupled with readings of Robert Bly, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette among others, gradually allowed me to become aware of these inner voices and their influence over my present behavior even when not acknowledged. At first I could barely detect the inner child voice at all, but it gradually became more individual as I gave it more attention. The child had lacked secure love during my growing up years. What the child needed now was the secure love and guidance of my adult self as parent, the secure love and guidance it had not consistently received in actuality.

The result was the development of the real adult personality within me. The difference may not be apparent on the surface to anyone who has known me over the years of my life, but the difference is apparent to me. The child's appearance in current experience is usually in fear based reaction to uncertainty or outbursts of exasperation of outright anger when faced with obstacles or complications especially when I am tired and less able to face things with detachment. The child can then take control as though finally able to assert itself in a way it found impossible during previous years or perhaps more accurately in the only way it found possible to express itself during that time.

Everything in my body and mind feels like behaving like a child in these instances. I can either allow these emotions to get the upper hand or call a timeout so that the adult voice can have the opportunity to reflect and speak. It then must acknowledge the child's concerns and express understanding for its behavior without condoning it. Its job is to show the child there is a better way and convince the child that together we can manage to solve things without resorting to temper.

Needless to say this is not simply a one-time accomplishment after which I never have to work through this process again. Instead, as I'm sure you know, it is an ongoing process that develops through successive experiences. The vital element is that the younger selves who were discouraged in their chronological lifetime by inconsistent or totally lacking love and support receive encouragement now from a consistently loving and supporting adult self as parent. This is what Moore and Gillette call the King manifestation (archetype) as opposed to the Hero – finding its start in the teenage or young adult male, or the Magician or Lover, finding their start in child energy. All these manifestations ideally mature in the adult personality, losing their childlike qualities as the male grows, but the King is the person who draws them together in balance, ruling over them as a wise and loving parent. Interestingly, before developing my adult self I preferred to see myself as the hero or lover – if not puer aeternus (the eternal boy), viewing the king as rather stodgy and unimaginative. I see the person of the king quite differently now however.

Clraisa Pinkola Estes, in her book, "Women Who Run with the Wolves" exposes the feminine side of these archetypes while adding significant insight into male attributes as well.

What I am learning to do is to listen for who is talking when I find myself reacting to a situation in a certain way, particularly when I feel uncomfortable with my reaction. I am learning for sure that when I begin to feel irritable and impatient with other people my adult self is not present. An irritable king becomes the tyrant, the negative side of this form and anything but desirable. On stepping back sufficiently to become aware of my irritability I then have to stay quiet long enough for the adult self to collect itself and bring resolution to a situation that may be spiraling more rapidly out of control than I might have realized.

It may be important when difficulties and misunderstandings arise in relationship that we ask each other, "Who exactly is speaking just now?" – and also, "Do you think these feelings you have just now relate to some past experience?" If a past experience is being called up by present events then we can be almost certain that the child voice is involved somehow and needs immediate attention and comfort. One of the chief obstacles to good relationships occurs when our reactions to present difficulties are hijacked by past associations without our being aware. We may then find ourselves clobbering each other with emotional reactions to past events rather than dealing fairly with each other concerning present circumstances.

Dedicated self exploration through contemplation and self observation as we encounter challenging circumstances and interact with others each day can help each of us become more aware of voices from our past that indicate unfulfilled elements of our personality. Perhaps none of us are without an inner child that needs soothing or an adolescent that could stand to grow in awareness of the needs of others while expressing his or her own power. The important end goal is that we be in good relationship with our whole self and with others, especially with those closest to us. While committed partnerships may pose the greatest challenge to our ability to greet each day's events with equanimity, committed partnerships may also provide another compassionate but firm voice to assist us to greater personal development than we might otherwise achieve.