Summary & Takeaways from Healing Your Aloneness: Finding Love and Wholeness Through Your Inner Child by Margaret Paul and Erika Chopich

Hi, everyone.  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar Channel and in today's video I'm going to give a summary and my takeaways from the 1990 book Healing Your Aloneness: Finding Love and Wholeness Through Your Inner Child by Margaret Paul and Erika Chopich. 

I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole recently reading about Inner Child work.  I recently did a video summary of Robert Jackman's book Healing Your Lost Inner Child, but the book today, written in 1990, is one of the seminal resources on this topic and still has much to teach us.

Here is the overall map to my book videos: I give an overview which covers a quick summary of the book, the audience, and some background on the authors; then I review the structure of the book and give some additional content; I'll give my recommendation and an explanation; and finally, I'll review 5-10 takeaways that were either surprising or new information for me.  First, an

Overview

This book was written by two mental health therapists, one of whom has explicitly spoken to her Inner Child for as long as she can remember and thought that everyone else also did this routinely.  When she described this interior practice to the other author, this book was born.  It is written for a layperson to understand their inner child and parent, but is also a great resource for other therapists who are interested in bringing this work to their clients.

This book describes the inner child (both loving and unloved) and the inner adult (both loving and unloving) that we all have within us.  The authors talk about the state of higher self that we can achieve when our loving inner child is being parented by our loving adult. And also the problems that can occur when our unloved child is parented by our unloving adult including codependence, low self esteem, and poor decision making.  They then give some processes on how to reparent your inner child in a loving way on your own, in therapy, and with groups like a 12 step program. 

Structure

There are two parts to this book: the first part provides some education on the important terms and concepts:

• Chapter 1 - defines the Inner Child and discusses how the it can feel unloved, abandoned, and alone when the Inner Adult disconnects from it.
• Chapter 2 defines the Inner Adult, which can be loving or unloving by being either an authoritarian or permissive inner parent.
• Chapter 3 talks about how, when the loving inner adult and child connect, that creates our higher self.  When they are not connected, our ego or false self is active, which has a variety of protective and false beliefs that we are bad, unlovable, defective, unimportant, or not enough.
• Chapter 4 talks about co-dependence, which is a result of the ego trying to get its sense of self and worth through other people --  making those people responsible for their feelings and sense of self.
• Chapters 5 & 6 are about connection and how accessing the loving Inner Child is important to connect to others, develop good self esteem, and worthwhile passions.
• Chapter 7 discusses how the inner child reacts to bad internal parenting in 3 ways: compliance, control, and resistance.  They go on to talk about how to become a loving Inner Adult through unconditional and dependable love and action.

The second part of the book lays out processes for doing the loving parenting of your inner child.

• Chapter 8 is the workhorse of the book, giving processes and questions to begin your re-parenting process through dialog between your inner adult and child.  The authors suggest that this should happen either in writing or out loud at first. This process involves exploring your fears and limiting beliefs and establishing trust between your child and adult.
• Chapter 9 reviews the fears that can make you get stuck in this process.  From fearing the child's anger and pain to fear of failure and discovering your core self is unlovable. 
• Chapter 10 discusses the concept of mothering and how we all need nurturing from others sometimes.  This chapter also delves into physical touch and the concept of open and closed pain. B
• The final 3 chapters discuss getting help in therapy, 12 step programs, and how only a commitment to practice will create real connection so that we can operate from our higher self.

Recommend?

This book is a gem and I highly recommend it.  It brings together so many of the concepts that I've been struggling to make coherent in such a simple and satisfying way.  It also does not side step the emotionality of the process -- in fact, there are sections devoted to working with inner children who don't trust, are rebellious, and refuse to participate.  I think it should be required reading for anyone who is trying to make changes in his or her life.

Take Aways

1. Inner Child Projects - if the inner child feels controlled, criticized, or neglected (many times mirroring the kind of treatment it received from parents or caregivers), it will project those feelings out and experience others as controlling, critical, or abandoning -- even if that isn't happening.
2. Fear of engulfment & abandonment - there are two big relationship fears that lie at the ends of a spectrum -- fear of abandonment on one end and fear of engulfment or domination on the other.
3. Matching woundedness - this one was a bit of a shocker to me, but the more I think about it, the more true it seems, people in a relationship are almost always perfectly matched at their level of woundedness.
4. Body location - The instinctual inner child lives in the center of the body or the solar plexus while the action-oriented inner adult resides in the head.
5. Ego in past & present - the inner child can experience the present moment, but the false self or ego lives in the past and future creating either anxiety or depression.
6. Softness & power - contrary to popular belief, softness is the way we are when we are connected and unafraid and is the most powerful way to be.  Pseudo-power comes from fear and leads us to dominate, control, or reject others.
7. Positive Parenting - I love this idea - the authors suggest that we all read good books on child rearing and apply them to being a loving parent to our inner child. In fact, there is a new movement towards positive parenting. the principles of which would work great as a way to love and care for our inner child.
8. Need and neediness - these are apparently different concepts.  We all need the help of others to grow and thrive, but we are being needy when we abandon our inner child and expect others to fix us, take away our pain, or make us happy.
9. Closed and open pain - another concept that has so many rich associations for me is the idea that open pain is about loss and mourning and the acceptance of wounds.  Closed pain is when we abandon or shut down our inner child and become a victim.  We use closed pain to avoid negative feelings and manipulate others into taking care of us.
10. Codependent therapists - this is gold right here - therapists who give support and sympathy in order to gain their client's approval are codependent.  They need to be able to speak truth to their clients so that their clients can take responsibility for their own pain and joy. Clients are sometime addicted to the approval of the therapist, playing out their usual relationship patterns inside the therapy room. And one last bonus one,
11. Personality disorders - some personality disorders like OCD result from an overly controlling inner adult, but most people with personality disorders have an extremely permissive inner adult who has abandoned and left the inner child completely alone to handle things in chaotic, selfish, avoidant, or sometimes violent ways. This can be seen in borderline, histrionic, narcissistic, avoidant, and dependent personality disorders.

Conclusion

I loved this book and will probably return to it again and again as I share it's teachings and methods with my clients.  It helps me to understand the notions of self compassion and internal emotional safety that I believe are central to psychological wellness.  Along with great conceptual information, the authors also gives some great advice on how to begin the dialog to be a more loving parent to your inner child.  There were so many takeaways that I really had to pick and choose and I still ended up with 11 rather than my usual Max of 10. 

I'd love to know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!