The Metaphysical Inner Child & Adolescent
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
The inner child and adolescent is the part of our personality that represents the needs of those phases in our life. The child, knowing nothing but self, is completely self-centered, while the adolescent, who has figured out that other people have needs too, tends to be self-important. In other words, the adolescent believes that their needs are more important than any one else's. Although self-centered, the child is generally happy to receive guidance and care from adults. The adolescent, on the other hand, thinks he or she "knows it all." Bishop and Grunte (1992), explain, "Inner Children [includes Inner Teens] are the one or more young personalities we all have inside us. In many ways, these Inner Children are just like outer children - loving, curious, full of feeling and emotion, intelligent, and complete. They differ from outer children in that: (1) they share a physical body with an adult being - that is, you; (2) they are caught in a time warp: that is, even though the body they inhabit is fully grown, they still think they're physically small and proportionately vulnerable, especially to people who resemble their original caretakers in some way; (3) when threatened, they revert to behaviors that are related to unhappy events early in their lives, and they recreate the sense of helplessness, pain, rage, and fear that those original events evoked in them."
These are healthy parts of our psyches and part of the whole but they are also immature. These parts of us do not die but must be evolved. We will never stop having the self-centered attributes of our inner child, nor lose the self-important and righteous attitude of our inner adolescent, because, as Bishop and Grunte (1992), explain, "These Inner Children are made up of our own memories and our own emotional, thinking, and behavioral patterns at various ages, and so they are part of what makes every one of us who we are… Inner Children aren't abnormal or alien, nor does their presence in any way prevent us from being whole, integrated adults. Quite the contrary: The quality of our lives expand and deepen as we get to know and learn to care for them properly." Everyone who incarnates has a shadow. Our shadows harbor the remnants of immature, self-centered and self-important behaviors not yet outgrown from childhood. It also contains the leftover limited beliefs garnered from childhood that lead to lives that are less than successful. We carry our childhood terrors, and the defenses designed to protect us from what we fear in our shadows as well. Because these things are part of the operating systems of the child and adolescent within us, they will continue to function in our lives in ways we don't recognize if our adult self doesn't recognize these behavior patterns and transcend them by choosing to transform this mentality and see things differently. As Lazaris clearly states, "Becoming an adult is a conscious choice." The problem arises when childhood abuse, neglect, or trauma stunts our spiritual and emotional growth. John Bradshaw, in his book Home Coming: Reclaiming And Championing Your Inner Child (1990), uses the tool of a mnemonic formula to describe the contamination a wounded inner child has on our lives:
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Co-Dependence
Offender Behaviors
Narcissistic Disorders
Trust Issues
Acting Out/Acting In Behaviors
Magical Beliefs
Intimacy Dysfunctions
Nondisciplined Behaviors
Addiction/Compulsive Behaviors
Thought Distortions
Emptiness (Apathy, Depression)
A responsible, healed adult recognizes when he or she behaves immaturely. Honest self-assessment, asking for forgiveness, making amends and changing behavior is the outcome. Before this can happen, however, the child and adolescent must be healed.
Most of us were born to parents who were immature in some way. Because our society doesn't teach us how to grow up, our parents, at least to some extent, probably stagnated in immature ways of being and behaving. Being poor role models, they could not teach us what we needed to know to become more mature, happier, and loving individuals. Being immature, our parents often treated us in unloving and irresponsible ways. Bishop and Grunte (1992) state, "When a person's Inner Grown-up fully loves and properly cares for every one of the Inner Children, the person experiences a sense of wholeness, health, and joy, as well as love for self and others, regardless of our outer circumstances… However, because no parent is perfect in all areas, and parents can't teach what they themselves don't know, most of us lack the information that can allow us to change, as well as the role models that can teach us how. Many are poorly equipped for the job of taking care of their Inner Children… When ill-equipped, we tend to resort to behaviors that aren't suited to adult life because, in some respect, we disregard the connection between action and consequences." This causes us to feel pain.
As children and adolescents, we were not yet mature enough to protect ourselves and also process this pain, so parts of our personality stagnated at their stages of development. Because most adolescents stop listening to authority figures (especially authority figures who are immature themselves), they become pioneering crusaders who are determined to make their own way in the world. Not seeing the bigger picture, their ways will fail just like their parents. Eventually, they too will learn the lessons evolution teaches everyone. Until the mature part of us processes the emotions from the painful childhood incidents, we will hold onto the grievances, reacting in the same way as adults that we did as children and adolescents. Our goal is to change these patterns, as Lazaris (1999) lovingly reminds us, "It's not about fixing. It's about changing. It's not about fixing others, it's about giving them space and allowing them to change. It's not about fixing the world, it's about having enough passion, love, and beauty to allow the world to evolve."