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Originally Posted by amandalouise
Good question. My ex-therapist and I spoken about inner child telling me I need to parent my inner child and help the inner child do things that my parents should have been doing as parents, but never did. I was thinking 'how do I do that? How do you parent yourself? Do you need kids in order to do it?' I felt confused and after therapy, I have been trying to "parent my inner child" to do/learn the things my parents should have taught as a kid and I can hear myself starting to cry when I can't figure something out and give up.
She didn't give me any assignments on working on my inner child. I was trying to do something at home and got very frustrated at the object, I could feel the tears in my eyes that's what I've always done when I was a kid is cry over it and get bored with it then leave. Nobody told me to work at it until you get it, how could I do that when I was called every name in the book daily?
I am still trying and feel like I am not doing a good job "parenting the inner child." I was asking myself 'how does a loving parent talk to their children when they are struggling? How do they do it?' My ex-therapist expected me to work on it on my own...really? Why even go to therapy?
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I was given this idea the other day - only to come to realize I have been doing this since I was a little girl. I have been comforting myself when I cry, comforting myself in my head when I feeling like I am going to have a mental breakdown, etc. I am going to work on trying to look back and imagine going to the park, reading books, being nurtured as a baby, etc. but I just don't know how that is going to work out for me. I know it isn't real, and I do not have faith that I am going to be able to trick myself into believing it was/is real.
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Originally Posted by Restin
parenting your inner child has a healthy ring to it and can be an ultimate goal. But one thing that can happen, very anti-therapeutic, is to skip out on the Transference relation with the therapist. It is that person-to-person relationship that makes you well, not just going it alone (which is what we've tried already!) We have a strong tendency to be loners and to have attachment fears that can only be healed by a therapist.
I've realized that being a parent to myself comes at the end of therapy, not the beginning or middle. I read John Bradshaw's book, "Homecoming" where he's very strong about this self parenting idea. I realized I was completely cutting my therapist out of the picture and actually causing my DID and bonding avoidance to be much worse. So, it's a two-sided coin. And if the idea of being a parent to my own self makes me feel lost, alone, and resentful, I'm pushing myself in to a more advanced stage than I'm ready for.
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Yes - I have found that as I have done this by myself over the years (as a child, nobody told me to do it, I just started comforting myself by doing it) it made me feel very, very alone.