An inner child resides in every adult person, captured in the brain's memory bank.
It exists in the memory or subconscious because each one of us has poignant memories of our past that shape our present motivation and future drive.
It forms a great part of our current value and belief system.
Your inner child is the free spirited pixie or elf you have tamed and controlled, within you yet who resides within you. It is your emotional and sensitive self, who you have channeled, controlled and silenced and who is still living within you.
It is the creative, imaginative and artistic part of you who has been molded, structured and organised.
It is the hurt, pained, neglected, frustrated, and abused and ignored part of you whom you have masked and hidden from view and denied the existence of.
Learning how to parent your own particular inner child is one of the most powerful processes available to us in our pursuit of a healthy self-esteem.
Congratulations, you have a baby!
Take a look at this picture and think about what your dearest wishes for a child are.
What gifts would you like to bestow on this child ?
What kind of parent are you going to be?
I think I would like a child to learn from a young age that its okay to:
- Have the freedom to make choices for itself.
- Be "selfish" and do the things you want to do.
- Take the time to do the things you want to do.
- Associate only with the people you want to associate with.
- Accept some people and to reject others.
- Give and accept love from others.
- Allow someone else to care for you.
- Enjoy the fruits of your labour with no guilt feelings.
- Take time to play and have fun each day.
- Not to be so serious, intense and inflexible about life.
- Set limits on how you are going to relate to others.
- Not always "serve" others.
- Be in charge of your life and not let others dictate to you.
- Be honest with others about your thoughts and feelings.
- Take risks and to suffer the positive or negative consequences of such risks.
- Make mistakes, laugh at them and carry on. Understand they are a natural process of life.
- Let your imagination and creativity be set free and to soar with the eagles.
- Cry, hurt and to be in pain as long as you share your feelings; do not repress or suppress them.
- Be angry, to express your anger and to bring your anger to some resolution.
- Make decisions for yourself.
- Be a problem solver and come up with solutions with which everyone may not agree.
- Feel happiness, joy, excitement, pleasure and excitement about living.
- Know that you are unique and perfect just the way you are.
Neglecting the parenting of our inner child has negative consequences. When as adults we choose to suppress the memory, needs and desires of the "inner child" we run the risk of:
- Never learning how to feel normally.
- Never learning how to play and have fun.
- Never learning how to relax and manage stress.
- Never learning how to appreciate life. We would rather work at living.
- Taking ourselves too seriously.
- Feeling guilty over not being good enough, driving ourselves to work harder to be good enough.
- Social isolation, afraid to get involved with other people for fear we will be found out to be inadequate, not normal or a misfit.
Take out a picture of yourself as a baby.
Keep it in a place that you can see it regularly.
And, every time you flagellate yourself, take the picture and LOOK at it, and ask yourself the question: Is this the kind of parent I want to be?
Just for today.
