Relations with parents often do not go well. Many find it difficult to let go of old grudges. We quarrel, we try to prove something, to earn love. But it doesn’t always work out. However, we have a chance to forge a relationship with a parent within us who can give the inner child what he needs.
Many have gone through a difficult adolescence, but even now it is not always easy for us to achieve mutual understanding with a mother or father. Even as adults, we are still children for them. This means that relationships will always be special, not at all like what we build, for example, with older colleagues or friends.
Some complain that parents continue to patronize, control, as if their son or daughter is still an unreasonable teenager. Others lack the acceptance and recognition of success — it seems to them that now, after conquering another career height, they will be able to earn parental love.
It is easy to succumb to the illusion: if parents could change, could understand and accept us, learn to express love and care differently, we would not make mistakes, choose the right partner, and find happiness.
Our experience of communicating with them really determines in many ways what we become, but we cannot change the mother or father. Moreover, some of us continue to live with a sense of resentment or guilt towards parents who are no longer alive. However, there is a way that will help resolve the internal conflict.
Inner Child and Inner Parent
Sometimes we continue to be offended by our parents, expect from them what they cannot give us. And this means that a wounded child lives in us, who has received less attention and acceptance. But besides the child, there is another subpersonality inside — the inner parent. In many ways, he is similar to our real parents: for example, he continues to criticize or praise, as his father or mother once did.
In Become Your Own Parent: How to Heal Your Inner Child and Truly Love Yourself, Yen Kang Zheng talks about the relationship of these two parts within us, and also gives examples from his own life. Here are excerpts from the book.
You may have noticed that you often reprimand yourself with the same phrases that your parents used.
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 learn precisely from communication with their parents — primarily with their mother. “From a young age, directly or indirectly, we learn from our parents how to protect ourselves from danger and trouble, how to manage ourselves, and how to explore the world,” Zheng writes.
But parents, like all people, are not perfect, and it was difficult for them too. Wishing us well, they taught us to deal with reality in the ways that were available to them. Even if we live separately, building our own lives, we often treat ourselves the same way they once treated us. For example, we equally fiercely scold ourselves for failures. We try to suppress feelings that seem inappropriate to us, such as envy or anger. You may have noticed that you often reprimand yourself with the same phrases that your parents used, or imagine their reaction to your act.
Many people become paralyzed when faced with insults, or try to please others where it is contrary to their own interests. We repeatedly play 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 in the same way as they treated me. I unconsciously accepted some of the beliefs and habits of my parents as if they continued to live inside me, ”says the author of the book.
Inner Parent Functions
A small child is not able to take care of himself, so adults take on this role. However, as we grow up, we are forced to take responsibility for our own lives. Although it seems obvious, in reality we often continue to expect from our 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, which also had a lot of trauma, and therefore they did not always understand what we needed. Most likely, they wished us well, for example, showing strictness — so they hoped that they would help us achieve more than they themselves achieved. Understanding your needs will help teach your inner parent to give your inner child what it needs.
Zheng writes about the two primary functions of the inner parent: protection and care. But it happens that these functions turn into overprotection and overprotection.
You may find that the inner parent tends to overprotect us from anything that can hurt us. For example: “You don’t need to ask for a raise, because then there will be too many difficult responsibilities that you may not be able to handle. It threatens to fail.» «I understand you want to skydive, but it’s extremely dangerous.» Or: «Better hide your dissatisfaction in a relationship with a partner, because otherwise you will be abandoned and you will be left alone.»
By establishing contact between the inner parent and child, we ourselves become a support for ourselves.
The inner parent seeks to protect us from danger, but often this leads to the fact that he interferes with enjoying life, developing and growing. Adults sometimes do something like this: out of good intentions, they do not allow the child to explore the world, the author writes.
It also happens otherwise, we begin to indulge our own weaknesses and, as a result, put off important things. As adults, we will have to “adjust” the mode of the inner parent ourselves, based on the needs of our own inner child.
It is important to know what situations are potentially dangerous, how to provide a sense of security to the inner child. Teach him to say “no” when boundaries are violated. It is equally important to be able to cheer yourself up, support yourself in a difficult moment. This will give confidence and faith in your own strength, help you feel your own worth.
If we do not receive love or recognition from the inner parent, then we will try to get it with the help of others. This is how we become dependent on the outside. “But other people themselves may be separated from their loving essence and therefore not able to give the love that we need,” Zheng writes. “We need to go deep into ourselves and connect with our own loving essence. That way we can give ourselves the love we seek.”
It is impossible to save yourself from all the difficulties and pain that you have to face. Sometimes you are lucky and there are those who are ready to support, listen, help with advice. However, by establishing contact between our own inner parent and child, we gradually become our own support. Based on the practice of working as a psychologist, I can say: there are times when, having established relationships with themselves, clients notice that something begins to change in relations with real parents.