Remember that the bulk of how the child sees, experiences, and interacts with the world is learned through living in the care of others. Most often the inner truths are not reinforced enough to insure survival in the land of giants. The law of Self preservation activates the child’s capacity to make quick decisions based on often little concrete evidence. He then builds the fortress to protect the decision and build the neural pathways that dictate specific pattern behaviors through repetition and emotion.
The child learns to believe that life happens to him from the outside, or so it seems. This creates separation, mistrust, and isolation in a fearful and angry soup that can seem impenetrable. Those who can assist are seen to come from the outside, providing care and assistance and nurturance to the child if she lets it in. So that model is useful here, having the adult and parent appear as separate…but they are not. It is simply a way of integrating the energies into the child self.
Parental Elements
- Out of the Berne work of transactional analysis come the Adult and the Parent selves. These are useful and applicable designations because there are actual dimensional elements of our makeup that tend these arenas. We shall briefly explore the Adult, the Nurturing Parent, the Protective Parent, and the Critical Parent.
- Adult is considered the one who steers the ship because she knows the facts, holds the higher perspectives, gets things done, doles out responsibility, and is essentially where the buck stops. The adult makes sure the child is taken care of on all levels. He removes inappropriate responsibilities taken by the child in need of surviving the moment. She is consistent in her monitoring and taking action to build trust in the child.
- The Protective Parent does just that, protects. It is a part of our consciousness that pays attention to the forms of life, physical and energetic, and keeps them from impacting, threatening, or harming the precious inner core. This part will steer the child from inappropriate by age responsibilities, make sure she has her basic needs met, and applies energetic tools to keep the boundaries strong.
- The Critical Parent is actually the wounded and angry part of the child self, judgment and criticism stemming from helplessness, but turned inward. It is an insidious energy that is best demonstrated by the character, Gollum, in The Hobbit. Finding fault with the child’s choices, making sure she knows her flaws and limitations, keeping him from doing things differently, insuring that particular thought patterns and subconscious beliefs are kept in place…some of the things perpetrated by the
Some Critical Parent Methods
- The Nurturing Parent is really responsible for caring for the child’s personal needs for comfort, shelter, sustenance, and attention/touch. She will steer the little one into experiences and situations and people who will be of similar frequency to provide support, compassion, empathy, and love. He is the one who makes sure there is follow through on decisions made with the child.
- Though it may seem contrived using these designations, it is actually reflective of our dimensional nature and capacity to be in multiple places having multiple lives. Akin to personalities, this structure actually services the whole being. With the Adult directing the show, she calls upon the various elements to show up based on the moment. As trust is built the flow is established. We are all a beautiful blending of a myriad of capacities and expressions, many selves that can perform many tasks. This idea is leading us into the Aquarian reality of the expanding Oneness, the infinite connection we have that serves all at all times.
- The Piscean model was filled with destructive labeling practices that often energetically sealed the fate of the recipient. Each label carries the energy of all of its prior use, its control, its fear, its resentment, its manipulations…Labels would define a particular treatment that often did not swerve the unique individual. The psychological labels were particularly destructive as they stole people’s power and often incarcerated them to institutions or pharmaceutical prison. Too often, the many healthy selves we carry by design were branded as disease to be controlled, remedied, or destroyed. Too many have suffered at the hands of this perspective and treatment. A healthy embrace of our extraordinary capacity to bring much to the table of the moment is need now more than ever. The child self was the one who lost here as every one of these labels compromised his self-esteem and forced her deeper into the hole of I have no value, what’s wrong with me?
The depth of the Inner Child’s wounding can be profound, so much so that she trusts no one and often acts out just to attempt to get back at the ones in power. It takes consistent communication, action that is timely, and showing up in all ways to get the child willing to surrender complete control. Building the relationship a little at a time is the best means to change the form of one’s life.
