[Daeva]

Many people have no idea what self-parenting is, or what it entails; after a talk with my Mentor this topic became of interest to me. I began to explore it, and to use it on myself. Self-parenting is the concept that there is a conversation going on between two different sides of you, the Inner Parent and the Inner Child.

The Inner Parent is the part of you that is the most present in everyday life, it’s the logical side, the voice that you hear in your mind, your inner-voice and critic, a voice of reason. A lot of time this voice is harsh, and critical in a negative way, telling you you’re stupid, a loser, that you deserved that. The self-talk that the inner parent participates in often manifests from the messages we heard as children. We internalized our parents messages and became our own Inner Parent as we became more independent. Some of us are good parents to ourselves, but some of us grew up in dysfunctional homes and often times think negatively of ourselves, and in turn injure our Inner Child.

The Inner Child is the more emotional side; it holds the deep feelings and desires love and trust. However it also holds all the pain experience when we were children; the feelings of abandonment, insecurities, guilt, fear, anger and shame, loneliness. Many times we have told ourselves what happened is our fault so we blame the inner child and lock them away, or as a defense mechanism we bury them. We use defense mechanisms to defend ourselves, and our inner child, whether they be disassociation, or projecting. Often times how we interacted with our parents is now how we interact with our Inner Child. The Inner Child needs what any child needs: Love, Affection, Safety, warmth, guidance, validation, understanding, and fun.

The point of Self-parenting is to heal the pain and to parent your Inner Child the way you should have been parented as a child or as you would parent a child of your own. “The primary objectives of Self-parenting exercises are to help you fulfill your emotional dependency needs that were not met during your childhood. Emotional Dependency needs are the intimacy, nurturing, unconditional love and boundary protection that a person needs in order to feel safe, sane and secure in the world.” Dalconzo says. Furthermore, Self-parenting also teaches you not only how to be kind and emotionally intimate with yourself but also to others, Dalconzo says, “Self-parenting is a process designed to teach you how to be emotionally intimate with yourself and others, unconditionally love and accept yourself and others, nurture yourself and others.” The goal of Self-Parenting in simple words is to learn to love yourself, fulfill your needs, listen to your emotions and what they are telling you of your reactions.

There are quite a few things one needs to know before starting the process of self-parenting; and that is to recognize Self-talk and the old system per se of doing things, how to identify what makes a good self-parent, how to know when your Inner Child is coming out/trying to say something and how to react to the child. After we discuss this I shall give a few exercises used to get back in touch with the Inner Child who has been hiding away, ignored for so long. We’ll start off with self-talk, which is very important to one’s mental and emotional health. How we talk to ourselves effects our self-esteem and self-worth, unfortunately most of the time we talk very poorly to ourselves. We treat others with more respect and love then we do ourselves and that’s one of the first things we need to acknowledge and work to change, we must create a safe environment for our Inner Child to come into; not an environment where they will be attacked for simply being.

Self-talk reflects your belief systems, it also can trigger unconscious behaviors, coping mechanisms, and self-destructive behaviors, and it directly impacts on how you perform. Therefore it is far from trivial, and in fact very important. When you begin to recognize the voice of your Inner Parent you will be able to negate it with positive, more self-loving talk. For example, you fail a paper for your college class, and call yourself an idiot, or a failure. That is self-talk. Or say you said something wrong and chastised yourself for it, criticizing yourself, and being mean to yourself in general, calling yourself stupid and beating yourself up for something. Instead you could have reacted like you would to a child, instead of calling yourself stupid reassure yourself that it’ll be okay, that you’re a very intelligent person, that you made a mistake but it’ll be alright. Another simple example is saying “I’m not worthy.” and contradicting it with “I am Worthy.”

A way to exercise this so it becomes a little more easier to do is to stand in front of a mirror, look at your reflection, and tell yourself “I love you.” and pay yourself five compliments and smile. Compliment and reward yourself when you do something good, whether that be through a bath or ice cream, doesn’t matter.

Recognize the old system, are you used to automatically taking the other persons side over your own? You assume the worst about yourself? Blame yourself for everything? Do you invalidate yourself? Shame yourself for how you feel? Do you put yourself last? Do you bully yourself? Recognize this, and work to change it. Instead of blaming yourself try to look at it objectively, did you actually cause this? Discuss this with someone unbiased, see if they think it’s your fault. If you bully yourself, work on self-talk. if you shame yourself for feelings, remind yourself feelings just are, everyone has them. Make a list and bring it to your therapist for more ideas. You do not have to accept being treated this way by others and certainly not by yourself, you deserve better. Even if you’re not at the point of being able to state something positive you can stop the mistreatment of yourself when you find yourself doing it. Stop the thought and do something else.

How do you know when your Inner Child is acting out? Whenever we are triggered by certain situations, or feel like we are overreacting often times we are playing out old scenarios that happened/bothered us as children. Often times the biggest indicator is how you are reacting to a certain situation, you must be in tune with your feelings and be open to examining them and the situation fully. Often times this means sitting with your feelings, questioning how you are feeling at the moment, why you may be feeling that way, what situation does this remind you off. Sometimes you’ll be able to recall a time you felt the same, however other times you won’t be able to recall all the details, don’t worry! Just tell yourself that you are reacting this way because of your Inner Child and comfort and love your inner child. It is VERY important to validate your inner child, as I’m sure you at one point in your life have been invalidated and that will scare your Inner Child into hiding once more. Comfort them with words of safety promising to be there, saying that they’ll be okay, try to get them to relax and validate! Make sure they know that nothing can harm them anymore.

The majority of us have grown up in dysfunctional homes with parents that modelled a very poor parenting style, so how’re you supposed to know and be a good parent to yourself? There are quite a few traits I have found in my research that will help.

1. Love Your Inner Child
• Give positive self-talk, tell ourselves that we have value, are worthy, that we love our Inner Child.
2. Make Inner Child a High Priority
• Do not ignore, or turn away. Care for them, and listen to your Inner Child. Keep your commitment to them no matter how frightening or how much you may want to run away.
3. Understand the needs of your Inner Child
• Learn how the Inner Child came to be, what it needs, and how it will change over time. Have realistic expectations.
4. Encourage, Never criticize.
• The Inner Child needs encouragement
5. Spend Time with your Inner Child
• Play, learn with them, comfort, love, and nurture them. Spending time builds trust and love.
6. Listen to your Inner Child
• Listen to opinions, feelings, memories, questions. Respond with care and honesty and love.
7. VALIDATE Inner Childs feelings and desires
• Acknowledge the Inner Childs feelings and tell them that it is okay to feel those things. Ask the Inner Child to find out why it is feeling that way.
8. Create a safe environment for your Inner Child
• Find out what your Inner Child needs to feel safe, whether it be a locked door or a stuffed animal, explain what you are doing to get this need met.
9. Model Good Behavior
• In order for your Inner Child to believe you, you need to be consistent and honest. Follow through.
10. Set reasonable Expectations and Express them Clearly
• Do not expect Inner Child to behave or react like an adult, or be perfect. Be realistic, listen to yourself. Counter unacceptable behavior when Inner Child causes you to act out, such as a bath, writing, a nap.
11. Keep a Regular Schedule.
12. Engage the inner child in meaningful family events.
13. Create consistency
14. Reward your Inner Child
15. Do not hurt your Inner Child

This extensive list comes from: Adventures in Anxiety Land: May 2010

The last part of this I’d like to offer some exercises to engage your Inner Child and strengthen your relationship with your Inner Child. This was compiled using many different resources.

• Use your non-dominant hand and draw a symbolic portrait of protection, use any image that feels right to you.
• Start a Journal, write letters to your Inner Child, from your Inner parent, also using your Non-dominant hand write letters from your Inner Child to your Inner Parent
• Go to the toy store and buy yourself a stuffed toy or a doll that means something to you, make sure it feels right. Notice the feelings this toy invokes in you.
• Buy some crayons and markers draw pictures of your life as a child. Draw pictures of your feelings. Draw a picture of where you want to be in five years. What are these pictures telling you?
• Sit in a quiet place where you won’t be bothered, think in detail of a few good memories from your childhood, relive them. Remember to breathe in deeply and breathe out slowly.
• Find old photos of you as a child. Spend time with each photo, reflecting on yourself as a child. What was happening at the time? What feelings are associated with the photo? Do you like the child you were? Write your feelings and everything you can about each photo.
• Do kid activities like visit the zoo, play on the playground, color, climb a tree, buy ice cream.
• Play with your toy.
Most importantly parent yourself like you would a child of your own.

REFERENCES

Aasen, Barb. How to Love, Nurture, and Discipline your Inner Child. n.d. 27 11 2013.
Amber, Sharmai. Re-Raising Your Inner Child. n.d. 27 11 2013.
Congdon, Luis. Self-Parenting. n.d. 27 11 2013.
Dalconzo, Hu. Self-Parenting for Emotional Health. n.d. 27 11 2013.
Ganly, Sarah. Methods of Getting in Touch with Your Inner Child and Your Inner Self. 27 May 2009. 27 November 2013.
Have yo ever heard "A Conversation" Inside your Mind? n.d. 27 11 2013.
Karnaze, Melissa. What You say to yourself is more important than you think. n.d. 27 11 2013.
Katie. Angelfire. n.d. 27 11 2013.
Krucik, George. Re-Parenting. 22 12 2008. 27 11 2013.
Morpho, Blue. Adventures in Anxiety Land. 10 5 2010. 27 11 2013.
Nourishment for Difficult Times--Inner Child meditations. n.d. 27 11 2013.
O'Gorman, Patricia. The 12 steps to Self-Parenting. n.d. 27 11 2013.
Self-Parenting 101: Learning to Take your Own side. 18 12 2012. 27 11 2013.

[FeelingOpaque]

This is beautiful.

[Daeva]

Thank you!

[ListenMoreTalkLess]

Compassion towards my inner self/selves has been what has helped me the most. I used to feel disgust, dismay, anger, hatred towards those parts of myself, the ones that still suffer the aftermath of abuse. I found myself releasing my cruel judgments about what I had done as a child. Somehow doing the work I needed to do and changing the things I need to (still a work in progress), I have also found my compassion for myself.

Lots of great thoughts and ideas in this post. Thanks very much for taking the time to share it.

[Daeva]

Anytime, I'm glad you have found such compassion for yourself! I am hoping to get there one day.

[~EnlightenMe~]

Thanks for this information! I have difficulty treating my inner child with compassion because it makes me feel dependent on others (like my therapist). Your information has reminded me, though, of what I need to do. It isn't something that comes easy. I feel lost and disconnected, so maybe some things you suggest might help. I think being angry helps protect me from the pain of feeling abandoned. I am SO tired of being this way. . .

[FeelingOpaque]

I just re-read this and can't believe how much it relates to me. Growing up, from my earliest memories, all I remember is feeling shame or guilt of some sort. I remember the feeling of being scared to speak my voice. The importance of parenting, which inevitably leads to how one self- parents on a daily basis, is so undervalued in our culture, in our minds. I constantly find myself wanting to go out and do things, but then an inner voice always tells me that I don't want to be doing those things, I need to just sit here and be quiet. I never quite realized that's what I do until I read this. Thank you.

[Daeva]

I'm glad this is helping so many people. Love you guys <3