Relations with parents are often not getting along. It is not easy for many to let go of old grievances. We quarrel, try to prove something, earn love. But it turns out not always. However, we have a chance to establish relations with the parent inside us, who can give an inner child what he needs.
Many went through a difficult teenage period, but now it is not always easy for us to achieve with mutual understanding with a mother or father. Even becoming adults, for them we still remain children. This means that relations will always be special, not at all the same as we build, for example, with senior colleagues or friends.
Some complain that parents continue to patronize, control that their son or daughter is still an unreasonable teenager. Others lack the adoption and recognition of success – it seems to them that now, after conquering the next career height, they will be able to earn parental love.
It is easy to succumb to illusion: if the parents changed, they were able to understand and accept us, learned how to express love and care differently, we would not make mistakes, chose a suitable partner, and gained happiness.
Our experience of communicating with them really largely determines what we become, but we are not able to change the mother or father. Moreover, some of us continue to live with a sense of resentment or guilt before parents, who are no longer living. However, there is a path that will help resolve the internal conflict.
Inner child and inner parent
Sometimes we continue to be offended by parents, to expect from them that they cannot give us. And this means that a wounded child lives in us who did not receive attention and acceptance. But besides the child, there is another subtitle inside – an internal parent. In many ways, he looks like our real parents: for example, he continues to criticize or praise, as father or mother once did.
In the book “Become yourself a parent: how to heal your inner child and really love yourself”, Ian Kan Zhen talks about the relationship of these two parts inside us, and also gives examples from his own life. We give fragments from the book.
Young children do not know anything about their feelings, it is difficult for them to cope with them on their own. How to do this, they assimilate precisely from communication with parents – primarily with the mother. “From a young age, we directly or indirectly learn from our parents how to protect ourselves from dangers and troubles, how to cope with ourselves and how to explore the world,” Jen writes.
But parents, like all people, are not impeccable, and it was also difficult for them. Wanting us good, they taught us to cope with reality in the ways that were available to them. Even if we live separately, we build our own life, we often treat ourselves in the same way as they once treated us. For example, we scold ourselves as fiercely for failures. We are trying to suppress the feelings that seem inappropriate to us – say, envy or anger. Perhaps you noticed that you often report yourself with the same phrases that parents pronounced, or imagine their reaction to your act.
Many people fall into a stupor, faced with insults, or try to please others where it contradicts their own interests. We repeatedly lose familiar scenarios from childhood when it was not possible to just get up and leave.
“Despite the fact that as a person I am completely different from my parents, I treat my inner child just as they treated me. I unconsciously took some beliefs and habits of my parents, as if they continued to live inside me, ”says the author of the book.
The functions of the inner parent
A small child is not able to take care of himself, so adults take this role. However, growing up, we are forced to take responsibility for our own life. Although this seems obvious, in fact, we often continue to expect from parents what we can give ourselves. Moreover, we, like no one else, know what exactly we lack-attention, approval, praise, acceptance or something else.
Our parents have their own life, in which there was also a lot of injuries, and therefore they did not always understand what we needed. Most likely, they wished us good, for example, showing severity – so they hoped that they would help us achieve more than they themselves achieved. Understanding his needs will help teach your inner parent to give an inner child what he needs.
Zhen writes about two paramount functions of an internal parent: protection and care. But it happens that these functions turn into a hyperopeck and hypersabot.
It can be discovered that the internal parent tends to excessively protect us from everything that can cause pain. For example: “There is no need to ask for an increase, because then there will be too many difficult responsibilities that you may not cope with. It threatens failure “. “I understand, you want to jump with a parachute, but it is extremely dangerous”. Or: “It is better to hide your dissatisfaction in a relationship with a partner, because otherwise you will be abandoned and you will remain alone”.
