our way of life sits in young hands with a big heart and sometimes mistrust
Imagine standing at the bottom of a deep, dark pit as you stare up at a light teasing you from afar. With every passing second there’s no way of reaching the top to escape; so, you scream and shout, stamp and kick in demanding to be heard by the owner of the abyss, who just so happens to be you. Yet, suddenly you’re out and living it large as an adult, a grown-up or a reflection of maturity while making decisions, on the basis of calm. Wait, hold on, because here comes the switch and you’re back in the hollow, all four-foot and one with two to three octaves and so it keeps going, again and again.
Now, think back to back to a time when you were out in public, with parents and children fighting each other in yet more battles of will. You may have seen pouting and tantrums, frantic negotiations or even total war. The point is that one often brings out the same in the other if the adult has lost their way, too, and yet, each thinks the other is slightly less clever as strategies are hatched and re-tested. So, with anxiety fuelling chaos and a set of conflicting needs, how do you go about recognising the best way to move forward?
‘We often tend to ignore how much of a child is still in all of us.’
Elizabeth Kübler Ross, On Death and Dying
For some, the existence of a so-called ‘inner-child’ seems ridiculous at best or self-indulgent at worst and where those two things are interchangeable. Well, it’s easy to think so with a lack of evidence but attempts have been made to understand the forces at play when it comes to an emotional self, from the past. For instance, if we look at the ‘Five Factor Model of Personality’, (FFM) it suggests that we’re carrying a specific set of characteristics through life, that are constant. So, using acronyms like OCEAN, it’s easy to remember ‘Openness to Experience’; ‘Conscientiousness’; ‘Extraversion’; ‘Agreeableness’ and ‘Neuroticism’: while CANOE, is an alternative, too.
For that reason, it might be said that our inner child feeds straight into these attributes, and the link between those childhood emotions, the idea of self-control and the five-factor model draws more research in contributing to the literature. As a result, ‘Where Does Self-Control Fit in the Five-Factor Model? Examining Personality Structure in Children and Adults’, looked at aspects of personality development and childhood socialisation by measuring: controlled bodily movements, attention and focus, curbed responses and dealing with goal-oriented conflict amongst things, to see how they relate to the FFM. What they found, was:
‘Depending on the particular form of self-control, the ability to discipline oneself can be translated into FFM terminologies, to various degrees.’ [Discussion, Para 3]
With other behavioural studies drawing similar conclusions [Discussion, Para 2], it seems that the bridge between residual childhood traits in self-discipline and elements of the five personality factors, calls for some recognition of an inner youngster somewhere.
‘Quite simply, inner child refers to the child the patient once was and with whom the patient might, to some extent, have lost touch with on the way to adulthood. The objective is to help patients reconnect with this inner child to free themselves from maladapative emotional and behavioural patterns.’
‘Reclaiming the Inner Child in Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy’, Asser Mikkel Hestbech
So, evidence-based approaches to inner child work tend to arrive through established channels like CBT or Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and TA, Transactional Analysis. The former focuses on the present instead of the past as it tries to break down long-held, false narratives while the latter employs an ego-centric view with three so-called ‘ego-states’, in parent, adult and child. Applying these techniques to the inner child means challenging entrenched negative ideas about who you think you are in addition to coping mechanisms, that are counter-productive. TA seems suited to inner child work precisely because it directly addresses the child-like message and the way it interacts, with the environment.
In fact, assuming for arguments sake that there’s an inner child in each of us: what could it mean? Well, if your core is at peace with everything around you, then Carl Jung’s ‘Divine Child’ is said to work within, to make life flow. If, though, your inner minor is set on wreaking havoc, no-one is safe and least of all you. Meanwhile, hell hath no fury, they say, like a woman scorned or a man failing but a wounded inner child is a match with a match and kindling is anything within striking distance. It sounds dramatic, but the fact is the path of destruction from a damaged inner child is no simple matter.
We’ve all been there, it seems. The chaotic colleague who makes every day harder or the family member, who can’t seem to grow up. The stranger with insecurities taken out on someone else or the neighbour whose power struggle, rips externally. If you look back down that street, too, you’ll see hands holding hands as smaller versions of people call the shots, now and then. It’s that millstone of childhood taking over again as it lacks control while the world continues to pay, with damaging interest.
‘Our personality – that is, how we know ourselves and how others know us – becomes the outer form of the search for these [life] needs and goals. Personality appears to be stable, but in fact it is a notion, a device for organising our understanding while we are constantly changing ourselves in relation to things outside us.’
Personality: A User’s Guide, Nikita Mikhailov and Georgi Yankov
So, what about this inner child, intent on creating something? To be fair, it’s not always a power struggle or attempts to topple the board. Sometimes, the inner figure simply needs attention but in the form of trying again and by that it may be in the style of re-parenting – and what precisely, is that? Well, on the one hand, it means you deciding to parent yourself as you adopt both roles, in your mind. It means, you talking yourself down from an escalating situation and or caring for yourself in ways that may not be familiar: through self-soothing techniques like self-talk, breathing exercises or listening to calm music.
On the other, it’s a certain type of therapy raising eyebrows and questions with the idea of an adult using a dummy and nappy to recreate the past and which in the end, the American Psychological Association was forced to describe as:
‘A controversial therapeutic procedure used to provide a client with missed childhood experiences. The client who typically has severe problems, is treated as a child or infant; for example, they may be fed with a spoon or bottle, hugged, sung to, and provided with other forms of nurturance. Reparenting has been unethically used to justify recreation of the birth process by wrapping a client in a blanket and having them struggle to get out.’
It’s unconventional, of course, and for those without a pacifier: re-parenting is a way of re-learning some basics that were missed, growing up. Important things like emotional control, healthy communication, self-respect and an inner-belief, with a therapist perhaps taking on the role of a surrogate parent.
‘It may seem counterintuitive to think that an adult can be reparented by someone other than their original parents. In fact, many survivors fall into the trap of wanting their original parents to finish the job and hold resentment towards them because they cannot.’
‘Reparenting to Heal the Wounded Inner Child’, Shirley Davis, CPTSD Foundation
It’s important to say at this point that tackling your inner child isn’t about blame and it’s not about using the past as a weapon, either. As adults we carry the capacity or the agency to make real-time decisions for ourselves, but it’s loaded with caveats where so much, in fact, does depend on the past. That link means trauma, for example, is a chain reaction and it’s passage on a continuum passes the hurt from one recipient to the next until someone stops the madness. In fact, a great quote, widely attributed is: ‘Hurt people, hurt people’ and it’s true, especially when it comes to our reactions. So, no-one wants to absorb anyone else’s anger or for that matter grow their own but then experiencing certain things, affects you in ways that are human.
‘And this theme of emotional neglect by self-preoccupied parents can still be found in the most compelling stories of our popular culture. In books, movies and television, the story of emotionally immature parents and the effects they have on their children’s lives makes for a rich subject. In some stories, this parent-child dynamic is the main focus; in others, it might be depicted in the backstory of a character. As you learn more about emotional immaturity in this book, you may be reminded of famous characters in drama and literature, not to mention the daily news.’
‘Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents’ Lindsay C. Gibson
So, further questions arise in terms of: who were our parents before they met? It’s as valid as anything else and arguably more so, in being the font of your inner child. For instance, what if your mother or father grew up in an emotional vacuum? What if their understanding of love came through a fist or something as dire? Well, a wandering inner child is set to keep wondering with questions like: do I exist? Am I worthwhile? What will it take, to be noticed? The answers are there but hidden as well, by design or just an inability. So, no matter it seems if the game persists into the next generation of children, making it clear that immaturity is the greatest threat to humanity. Of course it is, where so many of our decisions come down to short-termism and expressions of anger.
Other studies of emotional wounding include the Schema Therapy Model which like transactional analysis (T.A), taps directly into the world of the inner child. It’s a synthesized approach taking in other styles such as the behavioural, psychodynamic and gestalt methods while adopting part of the humanistic process of transactional analysis, in the form of ‘modes.’ These elements are in line with the parental, adult and child ego states within T.A.
Firstly, though, what is a schema?
Schemas or cognitive schemas are mental models apparently formed in infancy which we gradually mould, with new information. So, if you’ve ever seen a toddler pointing at a dog, for example, while calling it a cat: you’ve just seen a schematic model, prior to adjustment. For the child, the first animal ever seen with four legs and a tail was likely given the appropriate label by an adult, meaning anything with four legs and a tail after that fell into the same category. When we then tell him or her that, in fact, it’s a dog, a new schema opens up in which things with four legs and a tail can have more than one name.
So, in terms of therapy, a definition offered by the Massachussets Institute of Technology or MIT, states:
‘Schema theory is a branch of cognitive science concerned with how the brain structures knowledge. A schema is an organized unit of knowledge for a subject or event. It is based on past experience and is accessed to guide current understanding or action.’
‘Self-schema is a term used to describe knowledge we accumulate about ourselves by interacting with the natural world and with other human beings which in turn influences our behaviour towards others and our motivations.’
Jeff Pankin, MIT
Devised by Jeffrey E. Young, in 1990, the model seems to have helped a number of people while at the same time running into stiff analysis, over its evidence base and clinical effectiveness. A 2015, systematic review of the latter, said:
‘Although initial studies focused on personality disorders (especially borderline), over the last 5 years other clinical conditions have been investigated. Research has emerged on disorders not of personality, [but of states that are often comorbid] such as eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and depression, expanding the the application of this approach and enriching the range of evidence-based treatments.’
Up-to-date studies, in 2023, have also looked at relationships between maladjusted schemas and mental-health problems beyond clinical personality disorders and drawn similar conclusions. In-situ, though, the therapy process moves through the various appearances of an inner child that includes the angry child; the vulnerable child; the impulsive child; the undisciplined child and the happy child. In turn, the parent mode may reflect an exhausted, projecting and or overly-strict individual whilst the healthy adult is as nurturing and supportive as ever.
In short, the aim is to re-write those original schemas, the tabula rasas or blank slates that have locked into the body’s physiology while embedding year-on-year. In effect, it’s the goal of all therapy, of course, to reword and reshape your pain. So, as a therapist guides you away from counter-productive coping strategies that, in turn, resemble fight, flight or freeze: coming face-to-face with a frightened you is akin to what we call crunch time. It’s a moment of truth, where the loneliness felt in the bottom of that pit registers hard.
‘If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.’
Tom Stoppard
So, the inner child is a master of dualities while shape-shifting to skirt pain and yet in reality it just wants to be told that everything’s okay. Of course, its manner draws outrage more than compassion as lives tied to its rage are dragged to the ground on a daily basis, with energy taken relentlessly. Well, naturally, it’s hard to change a script if it’s really all you’ve known just as it’s hard to see the damage, when you simply want to be different.
Would you recognise your own inner child, if it tugged at your hand?
It seems strange to think that we were once all kids playing freely depending on where you lived but then nostalgia can make the bitter feel sweet or according to purpose, vice versa. We’ll carry that child, though, no matter what and hopefully, one day, if it relates to you: the meaning will change and the pain will stop. That’s often a prayer or a chat to whomever because in the end, society’s function fully depends on the mature whole.
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Images:
Young Angst, by Radu Floryn, Pixabay – Main Image
Lost Girl, by Beasternchen, Pixabay
Table Football, by Dmitry Sidorov, Pexels
Cat and Dog Fight, by Saye Fotograf
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