By Patricia OGorman Ph.D., and Phil Diaz, M.S.W.

Your Higher Parent and Your Inner Child

Each of us is composed of two vital selves, an inner child and a Higher Parent.  Your inner child is the center of your love, your feelings, your spontaneity, your curiosity.  It is the part of you which is exquisitely alive, vital, creative and from which you draw your energy. It is the part of yourself that feels your pain, that needs love and support and feels hopeless without it.Your Higher Parent is the center of your inner wisdom, your intuitive knowledge.  This is your problem-solving self, the part of you that will in healthy families gently and lovingly guide your inner child.  This is also the part of you who protects your inner child.  Your higher Parent is the part of you unaffected by your ego or your feelings.  It is the transcendent part of yourself, a direct channel to your Higher Power.

Vulnerable Cores

Living in an abusive family can traumatize the vulnerable cores of your being. And when traumatized, your inner child, deprived of the wisdom of your Higher Parent, may develop defenses that result in what we a compulsively dependent and what other call a co-dependent orientation to the world.

The Compulsive Dependent Self

With compulsive dependency, our inner child is locked away for fear that her spontaneity will cause embarrassment, humiliation or worse, overwhelming pain. The voice of the Higher Parent is silenced for fear that it will rock the familys precarious boat, resulting in rejection. The compulsively dependent self that emerges is often controlling and needing to rescue others, or in turn to be rescued by them. Or due to their compulsive dependency, they will turn to other things in their search for completeness, such as overeating, compulsive sexual activity, compulsive spending, or working excessively, all in an attempt to be filled up.

The Promises of Self-Parenting

Self-Parenting is about freeing you inner child and releasing the voice of your Higher Parent, about accepting and nurturing yourself.  The promise of self-parenting is that you will be able to live in the present and leave the past behind and learn to unconditionally love yourself.  Based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, the 12 Steps to Self-Parenting, provided for you above, is about granting yourself a second change to parent the child within.  It is about learning to nurture yourself through self-forgiveness.It is about letting God in your life and learning to reach out for love.  It is about letting go the baggage of the past healing olds wounds, and learning how not to recreate these painful patterns in your present. It is about allowing your inner child to be spontaneous, joyful, alive, free.  It is about allowing your Higher Parent to guide you with you inner wisdom.

It is about learning to joining your Higher Parent and inner child in a healthy manner, making true intimacy with other possible, allowing you to break the bonds of isolation and compulsive or co-dependent behavior.  It is about learning through healthy self-parenting to use our Higher Parent as a beacon of light to guide us through the storms and dark times, while your inner child releases the healing energy of love and makes it available to you and those around you.

All of these constitute the total process of recovery. Self-parenting is about the long road home the road from loneliness and self-doubt, to self-validation, unconditional self-love and intimacy.  The road from the pain of the past to the joy, unconditional self-love and fullness of the present.

-- Edited by mamalioness on Thursday 30th of August 2018 07:10:29 PM