GROWTH OVER STAGNATION: 7 Raw Truths about the Choices You Make
The paradox of control, radical acceptance, root causes and emotional dynamics.
First thing first, Kid Katrin is thriving over your response to A Guided Path To Your Inner Child.
It is incredible to see so many of you diving into the work, really putting the effort in.
Raw Truth Uno:
Which do you want - the pain of staying where you are
or the pain of growth?
Change itself is not the bad guy but we do perceive it as such because of our clingy, needy attachment to how things should be or should have been.
In a way, we are kids who throw a fit when they do not get the toy they want.
At the same time, life is full of puzzle pieces we can’t control.
Ironically, the more we try to bend reality, the longer we stay stuck.
One of my go-to strategies is:
observing a situation and making a mental list of what I can control,
observing the same situation and making a mental list of what I can’t control,
focusing on the former,
letting go of the latter.
I spent 2 weeks with my family recently and, let me tell you, this works like a charm.
Speaking of strategies, there is this concept in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy that is all about facing reality head-on instead of kicking and screaming when life throws us a curveball - namely, radical acceptance.
Radical acceptance is not rolling over and playing dead. It is facing our reality with eyes wide open, even when we don’t like what we see.
It is about owning our pain and intentionally choosing how to deal with it.
To answer the question I posed earlier:
Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
And sometimes, the pain of staying where you are could be called ‘suffering’.
Dare to own your history.
We either enter our stories or they own us.
Only when we have the courage to own our history, we able to write a brave new ending to our story.
- Brene Brown -
Raw Truth Dos:
SOME THEORY ON A ROLE YOU MIGHT BE PLAYING.
It may be a cliche but your story does matter.
It is never too late to give yourself a do-over of your needs, a chance to reparent and patch up these old wounds.
It is never too late to come face-to-face with that little kid inside of you, to let them know he/she is safe because you are finally showing up as the protector, the caregiver, the teacher that Kid You always needed.
Just like every story, there are many possible versions - and it is the same with theory.
In The Guided Path, I gave you a taste of Inner Child theory as coined in psychiatry.
Let’s sit on the couch of a holistic psychologist today.
In How To Do The Work, Dr Nicole LePera outlines the Inner Child Archetypes as “the 7 roles we play”.
To avoid confusion, the '“archetypes” are defined, and set in stone. The “roles” are the re-defined archetypes related to a whole internal family drama.
And just like every one of us, each archetype has a story of its own - a story of the moments when connections broke and the moments when emotional needs were unmet. Ouch.
The 7 roles in today’s soap opera are:
The Caretaker:
Meet the character that always puts others’ needs before their own.
They have this belief that the only way to earn love is by neglecting themselves and catering to everyone else’s needs.
It is a little bit like they are on their own perpetual mission to save the world, but forget to save themselves in the process.
The Overachiever
These characters are all about chasing success and validation.
In In the Realm Of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate extensively analyses the case of the Canadian-British former newspaper publisher, writer and businessman Conrad Black, self-proclaimed as The Lord Black of Crossharbour.
For friends, he went with merely “Lord Black”.
I am taking you a step further here, but you do get where I am going: he was addicted to success and validation. He craved this “Lord” title.
Now, even if the overachiever role does not mean that one of us craves the “Lord” title, this character identifies with a subtler version of constantly diving into achievement because, deep down, they are not so sure of their own worth.
They think that the only way to score some love is by stacking up these accomplishments.
The developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld says that this leaves us empty-handed, with something he calls “counterwill confidence” - think of it as dependable confidence, dependable on external factors entirely.
The deeper the dissatisfaction with the Self, the deeper the attachment to the external.
Where real self-confidence says “I am worthy regardless of achieving this-or-that”, dependable self-confidence says “I am worthy only if I do this-or-that”.
The Underachiever
On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have the characters that shrink back, that are afraid of failure or criticism.
They keep themselves small, unseen and beneath their potential.
They have somehow figured out that if they stay small, maybe they will avoid any pain or failure.
My introduction must have convinced you that this may not be the case.
The Rescuer/The Protector
The fighters with ferocious attempts to rescue those around them, the rescuer/protect role is a cousin of the caretaker.
On one hand, the Caretaker and The Rescuer do have a very similar relationship with the external: they need it for their sense of identity and self-worth.
However, the Caretaker is rooted in codependent dynamics that say: “You depend on this person! Leave everything you need behind!”.
The Rescuer’s dynamics say: “Others depend on you! They are helpless, they are incapable, they are dependent. Satisfy this dependence and you hold the power.”
“What to us looks like independence is really just dependence transferred.
We are in such a hurry for our children to be able to do things themselves that we do not see just how dependent they really are.
Like power, dependence has become a dirty word.
We want our children to be self-directing, self-motivated, self-controlled, self-orienting, self-reliant, and self-assured.
We have put such a premium on independence that we lose sight of what childhood is about. Parents.”
The Life of the Party
Mmm.. one could say that they are the fun ones in the bunch.
They laugh, they make us laugh. It is a party, really.
Most of the time, however, the Life of the Party is a facade in front of pain, weakness and vulnerability.
“It’s likely that this Inner Child was shamed for their emotional state”, as Dr Nicole LePera puts it.
The mission becomes to keep everyone happy - as loud and as cheerful as possible, under the tunes of the newest hit.
The YES Person
“To be selfless is to be loved and approved.” - the first line of the YES-Person’s internal monologue.
Similarly to our previous character, the YES Person has some lessons from the past that need to be heard.
The Life of the Party was taught to mask, the YES Person was most likely shown that self-sacrifice is the way to go.
The Life of the Party is dancing their troubles away, the YES Person is a goody-goody handing out drinks as the needs arise.
The Hero Worshipper
The Hero Worshipper is the last character you meet because they were intentionally looking for THE person to idolise and follow blindly throughout the whole drama.
In Hold On To Your Kids, we read that:
“As children grow, they have an increasing need to orient: to have a sense of who they are, of what is real, why things happen, what is good, what things mean.
To fail to orient is to suffer disorientation, to be lost psychologically—a state our brains are programmed to do almost anything to avoid.
Children are utterly incapable of orienting by themselves. They need help.
Attachment provides that help.”
This role is all about seeking exactly this attachment.
Maybe they never got the guidance they needed, but they are sure as hell searching for the one to show them the way.
To make the choices instead of them.
Raw Truth Tres: We can break the spell.
Remember that we call these “roles”?
It is because they are roles - we picked them up on the way to today, without realising it, and they become these invisible scripts that shape us, our choices and our next moves.
We didn’t start this mess, though, but we can clean it up.
Rewrite that damn script.
I promised myself not to dive into more theory than I already have but allow me one little diversion with a major lesson, okay?
The field of genetics is like the OG of biology: talking about genes, DNA and how traits get passed down from one generation to the next. It’s like a genetic roadmap that tells your body how to build itself - from your eye colour to your shoe size.
What I would like you to be more interested in is its cousin, epigenetics. Epigenetics is focused on how your environment and lifestyle can tweak these “genetic instructions” without actually changing the DNA itself.
It is like adding post-it notes to your genetic code, telling your body which genes to turn on and off at different times.
In a nutshell, genetics is like the blueprint of your body, but epigenetics is the notes in the margins that guide these instructions.
Nature versus nurture.
If you look at genetics, you can raise your hands, lay back, shake your head and say “Hey! It wasn’t my fault! My mom is the Life of the Party so I surely couldn’t sit alone on the couch.”
I just provided you with the best excuse: genetics.
If you look at epigenetics, you can say, almost mantra-like:
“I choose where this is going to go. I have the power to select my surroundings wisely, starting today, and move consciously through a space that nurtures me. To water what waters me.”
It might not be the best excuse, but it surely will be more comfortable.
Go, Epigenetics!
Raw Truth Cuatro:
You Need To Be Your Own Parent
A pioneering neuroscientist in the field of trauma presented his case on how to help a vulnerable child to learn, think and reflect.
Dr Bruce Perry chose to name the following simple sequence:
The Three R’s: Reaching The Learning Brain.
While it is not intended for Inner Child Healing, I took it under my wing as a framework for nurturing Kid Katrin.
Regulate
First thing first, we need to get our emotions in check, otherwise we risk the autopilot taking over.
The “what I can control” question is my go-to, as I like to feel my space. Literally.
I keep myself grounded as literally as possible in order to achieve it metaphorically.
Where are you standing?
Relate
Remembering that there is Kid Katrin inside means that I can always bring her out and ask her “what is wrong now?”.
The now may have so many answers that I address the immediate and think of the not-so-immediate a little later.
I listen to what Kid Katrin is experiencing, and what she needs.
I communicate on her behalf, validate her - our - experience and take the next step consciously.
I make an intentional choice that serves us.
Reason
Then I get into the nitty-gritty of why Kid Katrin and I felt the way we felt.
On one hand, I have epigenetics in my back pocket reminding me that I do have control over what external environment I position us in.
On the other, I try not to dump my blame on the external and dig deeper into my past experience.
It is about gaining insight: so I sincerely ditch the negative self-talk and instead, understand why my present was shaped in this triggering manner.
What pissed me off? What set me off?
Raw Truth Cinco:
“Looking for a mirror, need a friend”
I may or may not have been listening to The Koalaz - A Friend as I am writing this.
I may or may not be singing under my breath:
I don’t want to waste my time again,
circling around my head,
looking for a mirror,
need a friend.
The inner conversations that I offer with the Inner Child? Ah-ma-zing.
But, I do understand that they feel unachievable without practice.
I have a picture of myself as a child close by.
At all times.
You need a physical reminder of the inner dialogue, a reminder of who you are doing this for - it is for the child in the picture.
Bonus points if you put it next to your mirror - it is for the person, who is looking right back at you.
As you are reading this, go fetch that picture of your shining younger version and remind Adult You to shine even brighter.
As you are taping the picture, remember to ask:
What do I owe myself?
As you begin this practice, remember what this person who looks at you right now has been through, what this child from the picture has been through and will be through in the next years.
I don’t know a better teacher for self-compassion than looking at my Kid Self and knowing all her damn struggles.
I wish that she could have had the problem of “I ate too much sand” a little longer.
Raw Truth Seis:
Stop Chasing Snakes.
As you are thinking about the past, I want you to take one story with you:
For a second,
imagine being bitten by a snake.
And instead of trying to help yourself heal,
you are trying to catch the snake to find out the reason why it bit you
and prove to it that you didn’t deserve it.
Dig into the past only for lessons, but drop the “why me”.
Aiming to answer “why me” just sets you up for failure.
Instead, address the byproduct of these moments that make your mind go “why me” and meet that need.
Get regulating, start relating to yourself, and let reason lead the way to more conscious choices.
Raw Truth Siete:
Give yourself the love you give to others.
Give yourself the love you want from others.
Most of the images that you will see today are created by the pen of
, who writes:To me, from me. I made it a habit, somewhere along the way, to belittle myself, to find problems in myself, to blame myself.
But by making myself the enemy - which I definitely haven’t fully unpacked the ramifications of,
I lost the friend in me, too.
Let that sink in.
“We liberate children not by making them work for our love, but by letting them rest in it.”
The same goes for Kid You.
Let yourself rest in the love you provide yourself,
Katrin