Adulthood

The innerchild is an internal character that has been established to protect the developing child. It guards access to the repressed emotions which were stored away in early childhood. It's job is to keep them repressed and avoid them being triggered by using well honed strategies. It will make our life difficult because its reactions are automatic and often not appropriate for the good resolution of a situation. Trying to suppress it only makes things worse as it will go underground and still try to get its way. This is because the system is powered by a young child's terror of being overwhelmed by what they in particular are hiding. Many people lie to themselves about what is hidden and will have a personal myth of a happy childhood.

It is childhood trauma that has produced our personality (character) and established our defence mechanisms and these will be different depending on when it happened and what the trauma was. If you are not convinced then read these articles from the Guardian entitled " Does gene editing hold the key to improving mental health " and " Shouting at children can be as damaging as physical or sexual abuse, Study says ". The first makes it clear that our very genetic make up is altered by childhood trauma. Fortunately or unfortunately gene editing is not the answer as it would likely alter our personality as it is determined by our trauma or it would remove the trauma memory and our patterns of behaviour would no longer make sense - it its all part of our history and what we have become. Such cure could be dehumanising. People are always looking for a quick painless fix, if only! Going through the pain is the only way and gets us deeply into our humanity.

This created character (inner-child) needs to be managed as its defence mechanisms are so crude it may destroy what you try to create. It is best and easiest to think of it as a damaged child living inside us. We cannot get ride of it or put it to sleep without the rest of us becoming less conscious as well. We need to learn all we can about it so that we are not unconsciously control by it. We need to know what makes it frightened and what makes it happy. What is it trying to avoid and what it gets addicted to as an avoidance. The best way to do this is to start a relationship with it. Talk to it. It is a wounded child so don't expect too much to begin with. Take it for walks and ask questions. Eventually you will get replies.

It appears that Carl Jung was the first person to talk about an inner-child. He was analyst who broke away from Freud. He introduced basic internal archetypes one of which was the child. I wouldn't bother reading him as he is almost impossible to understand and didn't in my opinion add anything vital to this subject. In the 1950s Eric Berne put forward a model called Transactional Analysis in which he said the human mind was made of three parts - Parent, Adult and Child, and human psychology was a series of transactions between the various states of these basic parts. Interesting but not vital reading. I would recommend two people who contributed greatly to this work. Alice Miller and John Bradshaw. Alice Miller was a Freudian Analyst but stopped because she felt it did more harm than good. She has written many passionate books about childhood trauma and even dared to demonstrate, to a world that believed in "evil", how Adolf Hitler was the result of child abuse. John Bradshaw is the guru of innerchild work and even though he presents like a TV evangelist he has a lot of worthwhile things to say in his books and lectures on YouTube.

It is useful to remember that the inner-child has some areas of human interaction that they are very sensitive about. These will relate to the particular kind of trauma they suffered. The innerchild will notice early in an interaction those particular subtle abuses that people try to perpetrate on others and therefore provide useful information about what is happening. ( Often signalled by an emotion or a desire for action from the inner-child ) This is information for our inner-adult to help it deal with the situation.(see next tab)


CARING INNER-ADULT

We all have the capacity to develop an inner-adult who is characterised by having the ability to make rational logical decisions based on reasoning. Such an adult would have appropriate emotional reactions not triggered by past trauma but purely by the actual circumstances faced. This adult would be able to differentiate between their own reactions and that of their innerchild and know that the child's reaction was as a result of trauma. If a person cannot get in touch with this part they are dominated by their innerchild and will be inappropriate in behaviour and illogical in thought without realising it or feeling like they are trapped by it. If you don't develop this part of your self you are not taking responsibility for yourself. You will just be a victim.

It is essential to spend time cultivating this aspect of yourself by imaging what it would look and feel like to be it. If you feel insecure and there is nothing in your life currently to cause it then you are feeling your inner-child. Can you get to feel the existence of another part that doesn't feel that? Can you get that part to take charge so that your innerchild can feel like he is being looked after? Don't pander to the inner-child's usual methods to placate its worries. The inner-adult taking charge with the real knowledge that all is well is what your innerchild really wants, i.e. a child wants its parents to reassure knowing that the parent doesn't lie to them. This is the piece of work that means you can manage any knowledge you gain about your innerchild. If you learn about your innerchild without a developing inner-adult you will become dependent on a therapist or a support group to contain it , but with a developed inner-adult you can manage all that for yourself. As an example The Twelve Step Programme of Alcoholic's Anonymous tells you you will always be an addict and to call on a higher power to control your inner-child's cravings. Consequently you need to keep attending meetings as you are told you will never manage on your own. This is swapping one addiction for another all be it one less physically harmful. Certainly use them to stop an addictive behaviour but don't stop there you can do so much more.

 

INNER-CRITIC

We all need to beware the part of ourselves called the inner-critic. This is a devastating internalised version of our parents that will give us no peace. It is actually an appendage to our inner-child. We need to know what makes our parents unhappy about us because we are dependent on them for our needs and this voice will keep us on the straight and narrow to keep in their good books. As we grow up we might want to escape this straight jacket but it will relentlessly pursue us unless we take it on directly with our inner-adult and actively work against it with reason and logic until we can laugh at it's desire to destroy, and know that it is the critical voice of our parents which they imported it from their parents. It's only there to get us through our childhood not there to pass on to our own children.

Our inner-adult is everything that we would have wished our parents were. It will always be trying to understanding of our inner-child and in fact be on a mission to learn all about it. If there is any annoyance at it then the inner-critic has woken up. Remember there is no right or wrong only things that make you feel good and things that make you feel bad. There is no greater authority than yourself and you own feelings, but you need to understand where those feelings come from so that you can make real choices about conflicting or extreme emotions. Is it the past or the present that is leading you? Remember there is always a gap between an emotional reaction and the action you then take and you can always change your mind or wait till you feel better informed. Get your adult to be in charge. If you can't, ask for help, but if your inner-adult asks for help it's very different from your inner-child or inner critic asking.

     
 

Kick out the confusing mind clutter

Children are born into a families and a societies that are full of habits and prejudices that make lots of inaccurate assumptions about this world. We grow up in worlds that are blind to simple truths and we have to adapt to survive. The easiest way is to accept them as truths and get on with it and that's what most people do. A minority keep asking questions, don't believe the lies and life gets difficult. Others try to escape those myths by inventing or being attracted by alternative ones and opting out. The truth can be found by stripping away all the garbage and it leaves no crutches to lean on. It is scary but beautiful in its simplicity.

There is no god or god's of any form
This belief indicates an inner-child need for a strong parent figure to take care of them.

There is no morality
No right or wrong only what you as an individual like or dislike. Morality is the way religions control people and a person's need for it shows an innerchild fear of life and the need for parental guidance.

We are alone
The only thing we can experience is ourselves.
We are each alone but we can work together.
Loneliness is when we are no connection between our inner adult and inner child

There is no after life, this is it now.
The universe does its thing and we can experience it through our senses.
We have only a tiny amount of control of life but we can use what is there if we are careful.
We are naturally inquisitive and discovery gives us pleasure unless we have had this beaten or bored out of us by so called ‘education’ systems.

We experience the world and deal with it through picking on objects/people/thoughts to focus on.

We experience the world as pleasure, pain or neutrality.
If we feel pleasure we like it and if we feel pain we don't other wise we are neutral and our attention wanders.
We become attached, positively or negatively, to people, objects or processes that we have feelings about. We then care in some way.
Loss of attachments causes emotional pain when those feelings have been positive and pleasure when negative.

Attachments are only a problem if you cannot bear to feel their loss.
Attachments are necessary for navigating our way through the world, just allow them to be temporary.

Use your feelings and logic to guide you through life
Be sure to know where those feelings come from and let your logic be predominant.
Our feelings are always to be trusted but they may be about something that has been experienced in the past that has been triggered by something in the present and we need to be clear how much those feelings really provide us with information about what is happening now or was it an old suppressed feeling triggered by something in the present. Either way it gives us useful information about what is going on.

We become whole when we accept what we are and stop trying to become different or better
No conversion therapy will work because you can only discover who you are. If you feel the need to change who you are ask "why do I hate myself", someone taught you how to do that - Who?

We all need to escape the rules and tyranny of our childhoods - Don't impose another set of rules on yourself be it behaviour, diet, morality or way of thinking. No more tyrannies, everything is always up for grabs. If you take shortcuts and follow a way trodden by others always listen to critics more than you listen to other followers and be prepared to change course. If you don't you will become a tyrant of yourself and probably others. Free yourself up and be flexible. Sometimes you wave in the wind and other times you stand firm. Surprise yourself. Your personality as determined by you inner child is predictable but your inner-adult has no such limitations - let yourself enjoy that even if you inner-child doesn't.

 
 

Gender and Sexuality

"I have always felt I was a girl but was born a boy."

If you are a boy how do you know what it feels like to be a girl and visa versa. you can only know what it feels like to be who or what you are, everything else is just guess work. How do you know if being a boy feels different to being a girl as each of us has so many mind constructs added in our first years of childhood confusing the matter. We know for certain that a girl has a uterus and will start to have periods in her teens and a boy will have a penis and his testicle will drop in his teens. There are children with mixed sexual organs (intersex) and they only know what it is like being intersex. It is not possible to change a boy into a girl or vis versa. You can try to manipulate the body by cosmetic surgical operations to look like the opposite sex but that doesn't miraculously make you the real thing. Intersex person's can do the same either way but they remain an intersex person who has had surgery.

Everyone learns how to behave by watching others in childhood. A boy can choose from all sorts of behaviours witnessed from his sisters and mother and their friends and he can decide that he prefers to be female maybe because of what he has witnessed from his father and other males in his life. Similarly for a girl. So their are many ways to be either a man or a woman but thinking you can actually change sex is a dangerous delusion. When someone comes to therapy, they often come to change themselves, but as a therapist you know that is not possible and that what will happen when therapy is successful, is that they will be able to accept who they are and celebrate that. Hence helping someone undertake surgery who thinks they are the wrong sex is a highly irresponsible act and will leave the person with a mutilated body and even greater difficulty in accepting who they really are. The question to ask someone who doesn't like being what sex they are is -"who made you ashamed of who or what you are?" The answer provides a target for the anger that has become misdirected at their own body.

Anyone can pretend to be something they are not, however, this will have consequences for transgender people as women have protected places that are considered necessary for their safety. Any male pretending to be a woman will create direct conflict with this. What is a important is if that transgender person is unhappy and wants to harm themselves. Then they need to be offered help.

Gender and biological sex are the same thing, but gender is not sexuality and they are best kept as completely separate issues. A person's sexuality is decided by their life events, as some experiences put them off and some things attract them. This sexuality may well change as life takes us to other more affirming experiences, but it may not. It's OK either way. There is no state of sexual maturity that anyone needs to reach. In an socially advanced society it would not be considered necessary for any participants in any particular sexual experience to have to announce it to the world by "coming out" (I appreciate that this has currently become necessary to create safe spaces for discriminated against minorities).

The whole debate about gender has been polarized by the right wing political parties wanting to demonise the trans community and the feminists wanting to protect their women only spaces. Women have every reason currently to protect their safe spaces while the LBTG community wants to try to give some protection and solidarity with the trans community as they are seen as another persecuted minority. The trouble is such support is a blunt tool that cannot differentiate between protection and agreement about cause and alternatives. The debate is polarised so that if you support trans people against discrimination this has come to mean you also accept that they are the wrong gender and need surgery rather than therapy. I want trans people protected from any discrimination but also protected as children from harmful use of puberty blockers or any other invasive treatments, and advised as adults against surgery with therapy always available.

Humans are sexual beings that have the capacity to be sexually excited by many different things often determined by our inner-child but also by other experiences particularly in our adolescence when our hormones turn on our sex drive. It is a self tyranny to label yourself by any sexual preference at any particular point in time. It is odd that society asks an individual to "come out" as gay or they will be assumed to be heterosexual when no other sexual preference seems to have that requirement. Keep your options open, be free.