the dynamic we experienced between us and our parents is a blueprint, a script, imprinted on the psyche, prone to be re-enacted in significant relationships — particularly if the dynamic was unhealthy and there are still yet unmet needs to be addressed — if we do not face, alchemize, and heal the inner child-inner parent relationship.
people are always, always talking about the inner child. My opinion, however, is that we have an entire cast list in the great drama of our psyche. Not only do we have an inner child, but we have an inner parent, too. Perhaps an inner father and an inner mother. Perhaps we are the intermediary between all of those forces, and our role is to work intelligently enough with all of them to create harmony. Perhaps this is the role of Mercury/Mind as the psychopomp. Perhaps this is alchemy.
I think true inner child healing is about inner parent healing, for how can we heal the inner child without giving it a healthy parent, the one it so desperately needed?
I think, in inner child healing, it is far more critical to focus on the ideal parent and all that they would have provided for us — then, we embody that for ourselves.
I have literally talked to myself like I would a small child if ever in need of consoling. I have literally spoken to myself like my own mother, like my own father.
We are both our own parent and the child. We must simultaneously feel, in its entirety, the vulnerability of the youth that never quite leaves our gut, who exists with us forever on some deep, instinctual level, AND be the voice of the parent we need.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only change form; so, if we deny the need of the inner child, ignore it, or repress it, it will merely acquire what it needs in some other covert behavior. This is the roots of addiction. Overeaters, sex addicts, substance abusers — inside of all of these people is a child who wasn’t adequately loved. The chosen vice will be gripped as intensely as the need remains unmet.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 