Judgmental Parent/Wounded Child

The following video is a humorous illustration of the Judgmental Parent/Wounded Child dynamic. This now famous Geico commercial features a vulnerable client trying to express his inner pain to an unsympathetic therapist.

Many adult children of alcoholics find themselves locked into one or both sides of this equation at different times. They even hold both perspectives internally at the same time (beating up on ourselves).



The Judgmental Parent often appears in times of fear and lack of control. We can see it all around us in people we come into contact with in our daily lives, at the mall, at work, during rush hour traffic on the freeway and in our own families. Two Judgmental Parents colliding or one or more beating up on a Wounded Child is the basis for the drama of many reality TV shows.

These two have their opposites- The Nurturing Parent and the Free Child. The Nurturing Parent encourages and indulges the Child, Free or Wounded, to share their feelings and thoughts without threat of backlash or judgement. The Nurturing Parent makes it ok and safe to express what's really inside, good, bad or ugly. With this support, the Child grows into connection, love and freedom. The good news is, no matter how old you are, your Inner Child is still there, ready for acceptance, love and grace.

The question is, when you are feeling hurt, anxious, angry, depressed, guilty, shamed or sad, does your inner Nurturing Parent come to the rescue with an eager ear and soothing hug? Or are you more likely to treat yourself as a cruel taskmaster would (Judgmental Parent), belittling, berating yourself for being "stupid", demanding perfection and that you stifle your "insignificant" feelings?

The answer to that question should help you determine how far along you are to becoming "your own loving Parent". The more you can be a Nurturing Parent to yourself, the FREER and less wounded your Inner Child will be. This is the power of healing.

If you never had good examples of Loving/Nurturing Parents, find a good Support Group, 12 Step Meeting, Therapist and/or Sponsor or Co-Sponsor. And next time you start to get mad at yourself for something, give yourself the option to choose nurturing instead!

Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

About The Inner Child

Interesting history and definitions of the "Inner Child" as a healing concept.

"The Twelve-step program recovery movement considers healing the inner child to be one of the essential stages in recovery from addiction, abuse, trauma, or post-traumatic stress disorder."

More here: Inner Child Enterprises: About the Inner Child

Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

All Self Hate Is A Toxic Lie!

Self hate is something many ACAs struggle with. After being victimized by others when we were young, we often carry our own persecution forward. If you believed you were ACTUALLY bad, THAT gave you your only sense of control in an otherwise out of control, painful upbringing.

Believing the LIE that you are bad allows you to distance yourself from the pain and live with the illusion that you can somehow CHANGE things. Now you can spend the rest of your life in a futile attempt to either change THEM (not gonna happen) or your own "badness" (which is impossible because it doesn't exist).

From Donna Torbico's awesome blog on adult children of alcoholics:

"Being loved cannot be earned!"

TRUTH:

• ALL self-hate is a LIE
✶ it’s a defense mechanism to deny our feelings of abandonment. This a crucial point: S-H is a cover-up for all our abandonment pain.
• it’s a form of narcissism - making everything about US, when it rarely is. We make other people’s bad behavior our responsibility
• it’s an attempt at feeling powerful, to cover our intense sense of powerlessness & vulnerability

Read more here: HEAL and GROW for ACoAs: SELF-HATE & ACoAs (Part 1): "I’M NO GOOD & EVERYONE KNOWS IT so I have to be perfect to make up for it Self-Hate is the #1 deterrent to growth for all ACoAs. It undermi..."

Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

How To Become Your Own Loving Parent

At Adult Children Of Alcoholics meetings and in ACA books we learn that we need to become out own loving parents. The ACA Solution states:

"We learn to reparent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect."

and

"You will take responsibility for your own life and supply your own parenting."

But beyond these lofty goals there is not a lot of explanation of the mechanics of how this is supposed to happen. Just how does one become a loving, nurturing parent to themselves when they haven't experienced this in real life? One cannot give what they do not possess. Or, as Drs. Cloud and Townsend have said, it's a bit like expecting a car with an empty gas tank to fill itself up.

And what if your internal parent is judgmental and harsh? Or exacting, intolerant and perfectionistic? Then you may be just replicating the past and reinforcing your own dysfunction. It's not enough to just come out of denial and face the pain of the past. That only goes so far. That pain needs to be comforted, that hurt child needs to be loved. This is perhaps the most important part of the process.

Here is an insight into the exercise of discovering your inner child AND becoming your own NURTURING parent:

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"First, one becomes conscious of his or her own inner child. Remaining unconscious is what empowers the dissociated inner child to take possession of the personality at times, to overpower the will of the adult. Next, we learn to take our inner child seriously, and to consciously communicate with that little girl or boy within: to listen to how he or she feels and what he or she needs from us here and now.

The often frustrated primal needs of that perennial inner child–for love, acceptance, protection, nurturance, understanding–remain the same today as when we were children. As pseudo-adults, we futilely attempt to force others into fulfilling these infantile needs for us. But this is doomed to failure. What we didn’t sufficiently receive in the past from our parents as children must be confronted in the present, painful though it may be.

We should not as adults now expect others to meet all of these unfulfilled childhood needs. They cannot. Authentic adulthood requires both accepting the painful past and the primary responsibility for taking care of that inner child’s needs, for being a “good enough” parent to him or her now–and in the future."- Psychology Today, Stephen Diamond, Ph.D., practicing psychotherapist

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I believe that becoming your own parent is a big step with a large learning curve for those that did not get it when they were young. So be gentle and patient with yourself. Go slow. In trying moments, ask your child what they need from you most. Is it a hug? An understanding tone and reassurance that it's going to be alright? Or simply to be recognized that they are present?

If you feel resistance to acting on the last four sentences above, ask yourself why. Is that your "judgmental" parent rearing it's ugly head, ready to scold you for having such foolish thoughts? Use this reaction not as a reason to further beat yourself up but simply to gauge how nurturing you are being to your own self right now.

Then ask your inner child how he or she feels and what they need from you here and now. Take a small step and be just a tad more nurturing to yourself than usual. And keep doing it consistently, especially during difficult situations when your inner kid needs you the most.

The more your inner child can trust you to be there for them, the more they will come out of the shadows to play and be free!

Manipulative and Coercive Psychology: Rules of Order in Crazy-Making Families by Rodger ...

Manipulative and Coercive Psychology: Rules of Order in Crazy-Making Families by Rodger ...: "Initially trained more than 30 years ago to be a cult deprogrammer, I have been struck again and again since being trained in family therapy..."

Eye opening post about dysfunctional family dynamics, their symptoms and affects: Role Reversal, Phony Communication, Boundary Jumping and Victimization amongst others.

"In Miller's and Black's view, the children of dysfunctional, crazing-making families are viewed as chattel or possessions who exist to serve the emotional, narcissistic needs of parents who were themselves denied rights to their own thoughts and feelings. The dynamics of possession of children as objects rather than people has been normalized over the course of generations. No one in the crazy-making family sees this to be the case, of course..."

There's more at the link above.