John Bradshaw Homecoming read online. John Bradshaw depression and emptiness. The concept of "Inner Child"

HEALING YOUR INNER CHILD John Bradshaw's "Wounded Child" Questionnaire The questions in this section will show you how wounded your inner child is. A. Identification 1. I experience anxiety and fear whenever I think of any new business. 2. I please others (nice guy/darling) and I have no self-image. 3. I am a rebel. I really live only in conditions of conflict. 4. In the deepest corners of my hidden self, I feel that something is wrong with me. 5. I am a miser, it is difficult for me to refuse something. 6. I feel inadequate as a man/woman. 7. I am in doubt about my gender identity. 8. I feel guilty when I stand up for my interests, I would rather give in to others. 9. It is difficult for me to start any business. 10. It's hard for me to finish things. 11. I rarely have an opinion. 12. I constantly scold myself for inadequacy, failure. 13. I consider myself a terrible sinner and I am afraid that I will go to hell. 14. I am a rigid, inflexible person and make very high demands on myself. 15. I feel like I never live up to other people's expectations and always do everything wrong. 16. I feel like I never really know what I want. 17. I can not stop in my pursuit of super achievements. 18. I believe that I mean nothing, except when I'm sexy. I am afraid that I will be rejected if I am a bad (oh) lover (tsey). 19. My life is empty. I am depressed most of the time. 20. I don't know exactly who I am. I am not sure that my opinions and judgments are exactly what I really think about certain things. b. basic needs. 1. I am out of touch with my bodily needs. I don't realize when I'm tired, hungry or calloused. 2. I don't like being touched. 3. I often have sex when I really don't want to. 4. I suffer (suffered) from an eating disorder. 5. I'm obsessed with oral sex. 6. I rarely know exactly how I feel. 7. I am ashamed when I am angry. 8. I rarely get angry, but when I do, I go berserk. 9. I am afraid of other people's anger and do everything to contain it. 10. I am ashamed to cry. 11. I am ashamed to be afraid of anything. 12. I almost never express negative emotions. 13. I am obsessed with anal sex. 14. I am obsessed with sado-masochistic sex. 15. I am ashamed of my bodily functions. 16. I have sleep disorders. 17. I spend an excessive amount of time watching pornography. 18. I express myself sexually in ways that offend others. 19. I experience sexual attraction to children and I'm afraid that it may manifest (I can make it). 20. I am sure that food and/or sex are my biggest needs. V. Social 1. I don't trust anyone, including myself. 2. I was or am now married to a person who is subject to vice (bad habit). 3. In my relationships with people, I am obsessed with obsessions and strive to keep everything under my control. 4. I am prone to bad habits (addictions). 5. I isolate myself from people and fear them, especially those in positions of power. 6. I hate being alone and will do almost anything to avoid it. 7. It turns out that I do what I think others expect of me. 8. I avoid conflict at all costs. 9. I rarely reject other people's proposals and feel that someone else's proposal is almost an order to be obeyed. 10. I have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. I find it easier to take care of others than myself. 11. Often I don't say "no" outright and then refuse to do what others ask for in various roundabout, manipulative and passive ways. 12. I don't know how to resolve conflicts with other people. I either suppress my opponent, or withdraw from the conflict completely. 13. I rarely ask for clarification on statements I don't understand. 14. I often guess what other people's statements mean, I react to them based on my guesses. 15. I never felt close to either of my parents or to either of them. 16. I confuse pity with love and tend to love people I can pity. 17. I make fun of myself and others if they make mistakes. 18. I easily give in and obey the opinion of the group. 19. I am an ardent opponent and I am very bad at losing. 20. My main fear is the fear of being abandoned, and I will do everything to save the relationship. If you answered yes to 10 or more questions, you need some serious work.

Any psychotherapeutic process leads to the suffering of the Inner Child. And only by understanding these sufferings, once brought by criticism, dislike of parents and significant adults, it is possible to change the current situation of an already adult person.

We build work with the client's Inner Child in stages:

1. Study of the Wounded Child.
2. Healing the Wounded Child.
3. Acceptance of the Healed Child or encounter with the Golden Child.

There are no clear boundaries of the stages, because methods that are used are both diagnostic and therapeutic.

At the first stage, we give the "questionnaire of the wounded child" by John BRADSHAOW or conduct a longer study on fears.

An exploration of the wounded Child's fears.

Consider the four main fears:

Fear of pressure and expectations;
Fear of being rejected and abandoned;
Fear of not getting enough space, of being ignored or misunderstood;
Fear of physical or energetic violence or intrusion.

Considering each one in turn, ask yourself:
Do you have this fear?
- what provokes it in your life today?
Do you remember anything from the past that contributed to its emergence?
- how does this fear affect different aspects of your life - sexuality, the ability to assert yourself, creativity, close relationships?

Write down the answers to these questions.
By working and getting in touch with our fears, we gain strength previously given to these fears, forgive and accept ourselves, gain more respect for ourselves.

So, you will need 2 decks - Persona and Personita. Lay out the Personites (children's faces) face down.

1. Choose a child who was often punished.
2. Choose a child who has been praised frequently by parents and other adults.
3. Choose a child who is having a hard time or is scared right now.
4. Choose a child who is loved.
5. Choose a child who is close to you.
6. Arrange the cards in composition. Give a name to each child. We talk about every child. We ask leading questions, remembering the names and stories of children.
7. “Which of these children do you think needs help?” Please put other cards aside for now, leaving the one that needs help.
8. Now ask the client to choose from the Persona deck an adult who WILL HELP.
9. “Describe the card, give a name, who is it, what does it do, what can help the child and how can he do it?”

10. After relaxation, we go into the image (symbol-drama method), taking a card with a child in one hand, and an adult in the other. It often happens in an image that an adult who really helped a child becomes “forever best friend”and together with the child, for example, he catches fish, eats ice cream, plays his favorite game, exchanges some thing for memory, even teaches martial arts. A very good resource image, in which you can always return when you need or want.

11. After that, we ask you to draw the image in which the client was. Those who do not know the symbol drama method can ask the client to make a drawing of a child and an adult, for example, "A child whom everyone scolds and Good Wizard"or" Antoshka and Grandfather ". Then talk about the drawing: what did they depict, what feelings does the drawing evoke in you, what would you like to finish, correct? All improvements are made only on this drawing. It is advisable to let you draw in watercolor or gouache. The drawing that you feel as 100% - but the resource can be given to the client.

12. Now you can ask to make a composition from all the cards that the client has previously chosen. If the client likes this composition, ask what gifts and/or wishes they can give to each other. You can make a “circle of trust” out of cards. If the compositions are “missing something”, then let them add new cards from any deck and “reveal the character” of the new person. The main thing is what the client feels when he looks at the composition. It can be a feeling of joy, peace, confidence, harmony. Thank the client for their work.

Traditionally, therapy is one way to help heal, but it's not the only way. The best treatment- self-knowledge of one's own body. What helps you should be based solely on your preferences. The main thing is to keep trying until you find your own correct technique to heal your inner offended and traumatized child.

So, five rules that can help you:

1. Read literature

In his book Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, by Dr. Caryl McBride, focuses on the emotional wounds inflicted on daughters by their own parents. What is it like to be a child whose wants or needs are ignored? Introspection helps you see your own repetitive patterns of behavior from childhood until now. As a child, you did not know how to satisfy needs when no one was willing to listen to you. Now you have grown up and know how to voice it. Pay attention to your own behavior now to understand how effectively you express these needs.

If you still have unmet needs or desires, you may be stuck in this cycle of sensations. For example, overreacting emotionally, constantly complaining or withdrawing into yourself and playing silent - all this is very bad ways say what you need or want. The adult self in us knows that when the "inner child" starts talking, it's not very effective. Pay attention to this.

2. Give yourself exercise

Heal your inner child and your painful emotions with banal exercise. Activities, especially in nature, are very, very helpful - with their help, you concentrate on the present moment. Remember that dwelling in the past never did anyone any good.

3. Work through your emotions

Emotions can really cause real pain. Getting rid of emotional pain will entail getting rid of physical pain. One example of how emotional healing works in the body is Emotional Freedom Method (EFT) or tapping therapy, which is tapping the various acupuncture points with your fingertips. Experts say that this is one of the fastest and effective methods which deserves attention and wide dissemination.

4. Become the best parent in the world for yourself

Even if you didn't have the best and most supportive parent as a child, you may still have good parent right now. It's you yourself. Become your own loving mother who will be kind and considerate to you. Become a father to yourself who will be happy with all your endeavors and will be proud of you and your achievements.

5. Look back without fear and feel free

John Bradshaw, author of Coming Home: Finding and Healing Your Inner Child, says we can find our inner child simply by writing a letter to the person responsible for our childhood wounds and telling them why we felt and still feel. this pain. However, living in a negative past that cannot be changed immediately leads to depression. Don't go back there. Instead, tell your inner child that you lived through the past and dealt with it, which means that you survived and improved your skills so that you can start working on yourself now.

Those who have overcome adversity tend to be the most striving for success, stubbornly proving their worth either to themselves or to those who doubted and doubt them. Let your past motivate you to do the impossible, not just succeed. To heal your inner child, you must fulfill your purpose. And if you haven't decided what your goal is yet, maybe it's time for that.

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Skill Building Exercise: Blame Relief

Guilt is one of the most destructive forces in a relationship, and one of the most common uses of projection in a relationship when blame is placed on others. The Guilt Relief Exercise can be done alone or with a partner if you are involved in recriminations. If you do it alone, then it should be a purely written process. You can use a pillow or chair to pretend to be the other person if you need to talk to them. Working in partnership, each of you can write an "indictment" in writing, then exchange them. Or you can blame each other directly. When working in pairs, you can take each step in turn to go in parallel.

Step 1: Blame it on others

In a conflict where you think the other person is at fault, you may want to look for hidden accusations that you are hiding. Write down everything you accuse the other person of. Attribute to him one hundred percent of the blame for what happened, fixing them on paper or verbally.

The task of the partner is to make sure that you do not take on no fault for what happened. If you are doing the exercise alone, read and review your written indictment, and then correct it if it turns out that you did take it upon yourself. some guilt.

Pay attention to how you feel about it. It is usually very pleasant to put all the blame for what happened on others.

Step 2. Take all the blame

This time, you must focus on yourself and blame yourself for everything that happened. Again, write everything down on paper or say it out loud. If you have a partner, his task will be to at this stage You recognized all guilt. Just like the previous time, pay attention to how you feel when you take all the blame on yourself. Compare these sensations with the feelings experienced in the first stage.

Step 3. Who is responsible for all of this?

Responsibility differs from guilt: it means "the ability to respond." This time, look at what happened from a different perspective, asking yourself the question: What degree of responsibility do I initially bear in this situation?», « How much experience and information do I have now, in this situation?», « How can I now use these features in similar situations?»

Write down or speak out your answers and discuss them with your partner, if necessary.

Step 4. What have I learned?

Ask yourself, “How could I do things differently if my capacity for responsibility was used more effectively?”

Write down or say the answer to this question and discuss it with your partner if necessary.

Main conclusions

Projection is a major defense that interferes with intimacy and weakens relationship security.

Projections are present in most conflicts and wars.

The ability to control perception is an important skill for creating and maintaining close relationships.

Your shadow is made up of qualities in your inner child that other people have refused to acknowledge or approve of.

The restoration of vital qualities that you have given up can bring you joy and beneficial consequences.

Chapter 10

You will grow up the day you truly laugh at yourself for the first time.

Ethel Barrymore

We did not manage to find such a person who would satisfy all his developmental needs before he became an adult. No one has perfect parents. Each person has his own unsatisfied developmental needs that affect his upbringing, and our parents are no exception. They – unknowingly – gave you the wrong information. Perhaps they knew very little about the developmental needs of children, and due to this ignorance and lack of knowledge, they traumatized you through the mistakes of inaction and action. (Recall the perceptual exercise we suggested in the context of this topic at the end of Chapter 2 of the book.)

In order to fill in the gaps and correct the misinformation you have received, and to identify and heal developmental traumas, you can end the process of growing up through self-nurturing. There is only one other option at your disposal, which many people choose, and that is to blame your parents, teachers, and other adults who have influenced your life for making mistakes and creating problems for you. But choosing this path will not help you part with your childhood. The process of self-education in adulthood must begin with a reunion with your inner child.

Many people with counter-addiction problems grow up cut off from their inner child. They either give up many of the qualities inherent in their inner child in order to protect themselves from parental shame and punishment, or due to complete neglect on the part of their parents, they never had these qualities. Unfortunately, as adults, people often treat their inner child in the same way that their parents treated them as children. At some point, you must stop shaming your inner child by using harsh words like the ones you heard in childhood. This is a form of self-hatred. Using the examples below titled "Hurtful Sayings Your Inner Child May Have Heard," make a list of the things you say to your inner child to shame or offend.

Hurtful things your inner child might have heard

Don't get in the way!

You have no place in my life!

Do not disturb me!

You are still too young to demand and make claims!

I don't have time for you!

I do not like you!

I don't like your experience.

I hate you!

Don't act like an idiot! Are you generally normal?

You can't do anything right!

You'll never get it!

Why love you?

Who do you think you are? Look, the navel of the Earth has been found!

If you remember hearing such statements about yourself, then pay attention to how many of them you still say to yourself. These sayings identify areas of healing where you can reclaim your True Self. Self-nurturing is an important part of healing your wounded inner child.

After you have established a strong connection with your inner child, remember all the circumstances of your childhood that made you give up some aspects of your True Self. The perceptual exercises in the first part of this book will help you start to put the pieces together.

It is very important to take responsibility for the healing process, as this helps to free oneself from self-sacrifice and codependency. You can't wait for someone to do it for you. Our encouraging information is that, despite all the spiritual wounds that your inner child has suffered due to abuse or neglect, as an adult, you can heal these wounds. You can explore ways to meet your unmet developmental needs and heal your traumatized inner child. In most cases we are talking not that you have forgotten how to do something. You are given the opportunity to learn something new for the first time, something that you were not lucky enough to learn in childhood.

John Bradshaw, in his book Coming Home: Reviving and Protecting Your Inner Child, offers ten parenting rules, listed below in a simplified form called Your Inner Child's Bill of Rights, that are designed to raise your inner child. 73
J. Bradshaw. Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child. New York: Bantam Books, 1990. P. 192–193.

They are a kind of set of rules for his healing. These are rights that were given to you from birth, which you might have been forced to give up when you were a child, and which you can now regain. This is part of the healing process for your inner child.

The most essential part of the healing process for your inner child is remembering and expressing repressed experiences, because if they remain repressed, they reinforce old patterns of thought and behavior and prevent you from moving forward. Children are often punished for expressing anger or upset, and they themselves watch others scolded for expressing such feelings. In addition, many of our internal experiences, such as fear of abandonment, grief, anger, and shame, may be too strong for a child to express, even raised by supportive parents. Therefore, you most likely grew up without being aware of or expressing many of your deepest emotions from your childhood.

As we discussed in Chapter 7, many people have not received reliable information from their parents, teachers, and other adults about the purpose of their experiences. Skills that should be taught in kindergarten may not have been taught at all, and this can be an obstacle to building intimacy in adult relationships. An important part of your self-nurturing as an adult is learning how to use your feelings and experiences to achieve greater intimacy.

Bill of Rights for your inner child

1. You have the right to experience all your feelings. There is no such thing as "wrong" feelings. You can learn effective ways using the senses to satisfy their needs.

2. You have the right to want what you want. You can actively pursue what you want and directly ask for it.

3. You are entitled to what you see and hear. You are entitled to the last word about what you see and hear.

4. You have the right to have fun and play whenever you want. You can decide when, where and with whom you want to play.

5. You have the right to tell the truth when you see it. You can listen to the opinions of others, but decide for yourself what is true for you.

6. You have the right to set personal limits and boundaries. This helps you feel secure and confident.

7. You have the right to your own thoughts, feelings and actions. You should not be held responsible for anything that does not belong to you.

8. You have the right to make mistakes. There is no such thing as a "bad" mistake. Mistakes are useful because they help us learn.

9. You are entitled to privacy and are responsible for respecting the privacy of others. Do not knowingly violate the privacy of others.

10. You are entitled to problems and conflicts. You don't have to be perfect to be loved.

An almost universal childhood experience is renunciation, which is felt especially strongly if parents or other adults do not support or reflect the child's inner feelings. The illusion that most young children have is that parents should know how to mirror their inner experiences. When parents don't do this, children feel rejected from their inner selves. After this happens many times, the children simply give up their own personal inner self. Children who have not become emotionally empowered often depend on the opinions of others, allowing others to define who they really are. In short, as adults, such children remain cut off from their inner child.

Another common form of renunciation is physical absence. Young children under the age of two cannot go for long periods of time without their mother or other people to whom they are attached. For example, if parents go on vacation for a week and leave a child under a year old with a nanny or with relatives, the child may think they have been abandoned. If a mother goes to the hospital to give birth to another baby, it can be seen as a double renunciation (physical and emotional) because when she returns, her whole attention may be focused on the new baby. For this reason, we recommend making the age difference between children at least three years old. By this time, the older child will become more independent and ready for independence.

Parents should be aware that when they leave small children, even for a short period of time, they must look the children in the eyes and let them know they are leaving and be sure to tell them when they will be back. Even if children have no concept of time, they will understand the intonation of the message. One of our clients with a severe eating disorder said that when she was two years old, her grandmother took her into the kitchen and distracted her with cookies while her parents slipped out the door and went on a two-week vacation. This client is currently suffering from a strong fear of being abandoned by her partner and is unable to eat while experiencing this fear.

Psychotherapist James Masterson says that hidden sides depression that usually accompanies renunciation are intense feelings of panic, fear, anger, shame, grief, despair, and emptiness 74
J.Masterson. The Search for the Real self. New York: Free Press, 1988.

Suppression of such memories keeps these strong feelings out of our consciousness. The problem is that the experiences associated with these memories were very strong when they arose in a child, but as an adult they no longer seem so overwhelming. Most adults, however, act like they are still one or two years old and refuse to experience these inner feelings. No adult has yet died from experiencing their inner feelings, no matter how strong they may seem. However, many adults suppressed their feelings and experiences and died from the diseases caused by this suppression.

Alice Miller writes about the importance of grief over losing your True Self and losing your innocence as a child. 75
A. Miller. Prisoners of Childhood. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

The truth is that we can never go back to childhood! It's gone forever. But in adulthood, it is possible to experience childhood sensations and then move forward to the completion of developmental processes not completed in childhood. Probably, today there is not a single adult who does not have some processes that were not completed in childhood.

Most people try to bypass these unfinished processes with methods that can compensate for these violations. For example, people who have problems with emotions may enter into relationships with very expressive and sociable partners. However, by suppressing the memory of your unmet developmental needs, you may miss out on an opportunity to meet those needs as an adult. Maybe your unmet developmental needs have prompted you to develop certain qualities in yourself that you would not otherwise have! One way or another, these unfinished processes still remain and in some way slow down your development. You don't have to endure this hindrance anymore. You can remove trauma and free yourself to live happier lives and have secure, close relationships in the future.

The picture below depicts the layering of experiences and feelings that people create. The outer layers serve as protection against the experience of inner feelings. Note that positive and negative experiences are constituent parts core, so when you access these inner experiences, you experience more joy, love, excitement, and bliss.

The process of revealing and expressing your inner feelings is best done in therapeutic groups because groups provide the person with the security and support needed to overcome the fear of experiencing inner feelings. Watching other group members work with deep inner emotions often triggers emotional responses that you can no longer contain. Self-help or twelve-step groups are not usually designed to deal with deep emotions, but they can provide needed cognitive help before and after emotion-related activities are performed.

The final word of caution regarding the study of memories has to do with renunciation. Rage, one of the inner feelings, is a common reaction to renunciation. When a person expresses rage, it is like a two-year-old child having a temper tantrum. As people unleash their primary feelings, they can harm themselves or others. Rage must be expressed in a safe environment, and group members can help the person safely release their rage by holding their arms, legs, and head so that the body can move freely and completely release the rage without hurting themselves. In order to release your rage, you will need to work with a therapist who has been trained to make this task easier for you.

Proper release of rage can be performed quickly, with beneficial results. If you are a psychotherapist working with a client, before dealing with rage, make sure the person does not have any health problems that could escalate (such as heart disease or high pressure). Another effective and less violent way of dealing with rage is to have the person twist and squeeze a towel. (This method is especially well suited to those who imagine that they are strangling their offenders.)

We have discovered an additional, highly successful way to help people express intense rage, which involves beating a mattress or vinyl frameless chair with a tennis racket. When a tennis racket strikes a vinyl surface, a loud crackling sound is heard, which many people find satisfying. At the same time, we always emphasize that they do not beat the person they are angry with, but simply express their feelings and emotions. In addition, it may be helpful to place a pillow nearby to represent the person the client would like to witness their anger expressed over parental errors of inaction and action.

Learning self-care skills means taking responsibility for healing your inner child and his active protection. This involves letting go of the illusion that if you become impeccable, smart, or obedient, then your parents or others in their stead will provide you with everything you need. The only way to heal your inner child is to directly ask for what you want from those who have what you need, and get the rest yourself. Let's take a look at four groups of remedial parenting skills that will help you do just that.

Identifying your unfinished development processes

At each stage of development, there are special needs that must be met in order to complete the developmental processes of this stage. It is important to know what these processes are and which ones you have not completed. In the table given in the first chapter, we have listed the main processes for each stage of development. Once you have determined which ones you need to complete, you are ready to begin the work of self-education.

Use of developing positive statements

There are positive auspicious sayings that you must have heard when you were children. If you have not received this kind of information and / or heard negative statements addressed to you, then you now need to hear these positive statements from other people and learn how to say them to yourself. These can be statements like: “I’m glad you were born”, “Your place is here”, “I love you the way you are”, “You are worthy of love and very capable”, “You can ask that you you want and what you need”, “You can trust your intuition”, “You can think for yourself”, “I won’t leave you”.

Also, you may want to go back to Chapter 2 and check the two lists you made in the “Mistakes of Doing and Taking Action” exercise to make sure they include any developmental positive statements that you didn’t hear, but would like to hear.

Conclusion of educational contracts

Once you have determined what developmental positive statements you want to hear, find someone who is willing to say those words to you and make a deal with them. If you wanted to hear these statements from the mother, then you can opt for a female representative and ask her to pronounce these words. If you wanted to hear them from your father, then choose a man to pronounce them. Be aware of how much resistance you still have to making positive statements. You learned to live without encouragement and could convince yourself that you really didn't need it. It is important to ask that you repeat them until you overcome any resistance to accepting them. If you find yourself unable to listen to them calmly, just acknowledge your resistance and wait until next time. You may need to release some of your anger and resentment in order to receive positive support.

True love grows out of a union in which each other's best interests are as important as each's own interest.

You can enter into parenting contracts with friends, a spouse, sister or brother, or others close to you who are interested in helping you through this deep healing process. Choose only those people with whom you feel safe and who consider it their duty to help your development. When a couple negotiates to interact and support each other in meeting their unmet developmental needs, they create many wonderful opportunities for new depths of love and non-sexual intimacy.

Sincerely loving people are able to live on the basis of their True Self, fragmentation and community, as well as support and encourage the efforts of others in achieving integrity. The conclusion of a parenting contract is one of the ways in which partners help each other. Below we offer you an example of a conversation that could take place between two people entering into such a contract.

Current page: 1 (total book has 12 pages)

Stephen Wolinsky
The dark side of the inner child
Next step

"AWAKENING" - that's it, keyword! We wake up from dreams in which we saw the world from a familiar point of view, in a familiar perspective. Everything looks completely different ... suddenly we are freed from the old perception, and the world has become different for us. What is the meaning of your awakening? That you yourself have changed.

Pir Walayat Inayat Khan

dedication

In memory of John Lennon, poet and singer of quantum consciousness

I thank:

Christy L. Kennen; Lynn Benefield (proofreader); Donna Ross and Bruce Carter (editors); Eric Marcus; Roberto Assagioli, who created psychosynthesis and developed the concept of subpersonalities; Fritz Perls, creator of Gestalt therapy, for the idea of ​​parts of personalities entering into a dialogue with each other; Eric Bern, founder of transactional analysis and originator of the concepts of the inner parent, adult, and child. I also thank Dr. Albert Ellis, the father of rational-emotive therapy (his thoughts on fifteen types of thought distortions are summarized in chapter 3 of this book); Matthew McKay, Martha Davis and Patrick Fanning for their book Thoughts and Feelings: The Art of Cognitive Intervention in Stress. Finally, I want to give special thanks to Neil Sweeney and his memory for the love, friendship, and advice for almost twenty years.

About the author

Stephen X. Wolinsky began his clinical practice in Los Angeles, California in 1974. He has taught seminars on Reichian and Gestalt Therapy in Southern California. He also studied classical hypnosis, psychosynthesis, psychodrama and transactional analysis. In 1977 he went to India, where he spent about six years studying meditation. In 1982 he returned and resumed his clinical practice in New Mexico. He began to train psychotherapists in Ericksonian hypnosis, NLP and family therapy, as well as teaching integral hypnosis in psychotherapy and family therapy for a year. Dr. Wolinsky is the author of The Trances People Live In: Healing Techniques in Quantum Psychology and Quantum Consciousness: A Guide to the Study of Quantum Psychology. His fourth book is called The Tao of Chaos: Quantum Consciousness. Volume 2". He is one of the founders of the Quantum Consciousness Seminars and, along with Christie L. Kennen, founder of the Quantum Psychology Institute.

(Note: To date, a number of books by Dr. Wolinski have been published: Hearts on Fire, The Way of Man, Beyond Quantum Psychology, etc.).

Foreword

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to write the foreword for Dr. Stephen Wolinsky's The Dark Side of the Inner Child. This book shows how important and serious it is to work with the inner child. Dr. Wolinski helped me better understand my own work.

For many years I have been amazed by the powerful "power" of the inner child - but I have never fully understood why it is so strong. In Dr. Wolinsky's first book, The Trances People Live In, some childhood coping strategies are described as hypnotic trance states. This model helped me understand that we are stuck in the past because we create the same trances over and over again, protecting us from the pain and suffering experienced in childhood. Memories of past trauma manifest themselves in numerous symptoms that are commonly referred to as the "infantile syndrome."

Dr. Wolinsky argues that since we ourselves have created protective trances, we ourselves can change them when we realize how we continue to create them. The process that I call the rebirth of the inner child is a way to dehypnotize oneself. By imagining our defenseless, vulnerable part of the personality in the form of an inner child and continuing to protect it, the adult inside us is forced to remain in a trance. Once this trance protected us; now he limits us. I call the healing of the inner child the ability to live in the here and now; to do this, we must remember what strategies we used to suppress our childhood desires, feelings and needs. Once we become aware of these strategies, we can change them.

In The Dark Side of the Inner Child, Wolinsky offers us many tools to understand how we create protective trances to help keep our inner child rigid and frozen.

I have always emphasized that in the transformation of past experience essential role belongs to the adult part of our personality. Wolinsky speaks of the "observer". "Adult" and "observer" - in fact, one and the same character. It was he who once created protective trances. This observer is the reason why I am me and you are you.

Once we understand that we ourselves are the source of our own frozen and limited life, we will gain new strength, wisdom and responsibility.

Dr. Wolinsky's work serves this noble purpose of breaking free of the outdated and limiting patterns of the inner child. Consciously or unconsciously, we are always tempted to "objectify" the inner child, whereby he begins to live his own autonomous life. After that, we "idealize" him and give him our power. Dr. Wolinsky's book leaves no room for illusions on this subject.

The inner child is not a wonderful and precious creature at all. By continuing to use the same infantile and outdated behavior patterns, we cut ourselves off from a huge area human experience. In this area are hidden such wonderful qualities as curiosity, flexibility, creativity, abundance and spontaneity. Wolinsky calls the limiting function dark side inner child.

We are in dire need of a revival of the ability to be generous, inquisitive and open. These qualities are not inherent in the inner child, but in the genuine human personality living full life. By consciously changing our previous ways of surviving (the trances of the inner child), we will gain access to resources that will help us cope with "past traumas", transform them and integrate them into our present experience. Only then can we live a real, fulfilling life.

I won't talk more about the content of the book, because I hope you'll want to read it yourself. It contains whole scatterings of magnificent exercises on self-knowledge and self-healing. Maybe at times they will seem too difficult for you - and I would like to inspire you with strength and courage that will help you continue your work. The expansion of consciousness is worth the effort.

I want to thank Dr. Wolinski for his work in helping us to be freed. It brings together the best and deepest achievements of Eastern and Western thought. Now, when the need for self-knowledge and self-healing is becoming more and more urgent, Wolinsky can become for us the most desired and long-awaited teacher.

John Bradshaw

Prologue

"Woman, I know you understand...

baby living in a man.

John Lennon, "Woman"

In 1985, I made the discovery that formed the basis of my first book, The Trances People Live in: Healing Methods in Quantum Psychology. I have described the role that the trance state plays in causing the problem. I have shown how trance becomes a vehicle for creating and maintaining inappropriate responses; then they become habitual and ordinary ways of communicating with the world, being a source of suffering and disease. And, finally, and most importantly, I told you how you can de-hypnotize yourself and return the lost Self.

Although the book aroused great interest, I still felt that another version was needed - more applicable in practice and addressed not only to professionals, but also to ordinary people. The previous book was written for psychotherapists; this book is intended both for them and for the general public.

Something about the inner child

As I wrote in my first book, trance is often the result of childhood traumatic experiences. The observer creates trance states in childhood, and then uses them to protect the child from pain that he is unable to accept and understand. In other words, trances are often a way to somehow survive and build relationships with the outside world.

However, what was a means of survival for a shocked child becomes a pathology for an adult. Unlike the wonderful inner child so popular among therapists these days, the wounded inner child is stuck at some point in its life.

The concept of the inner child is not new. Roberto Assagioli in Psychosynthesis talks about subpersonalities. Fritz Perls in Gestalt therapy develops the theme various parts individuals entering into a dialogue with each other; Eric Berne, the creator of transactional analysis, describes not only the inner child, but also the adult and the parent. Discussing the cognitive therapy of Dr. Albert Ellis, Aaron Beck talks about the so-called schemas:

“This concept explains why the patient continues to cling to his self-defense mechanisms that hurt him, instead of objectively considering positive sides own life.

Any situation includes many signals. Each person chooses a certain set of signals from them, combines them into a certain structure, and then comprehends the situation based on it. Although different people can explain the same situation in their own way - each of them is usually inclined to interpret certain events in the same way inherent in him. As a result, a fairly stable way of interpreting a certain class of situations is created in a person. This way of interpretation is called schema.

I When a person finds himself in a certain situation, the scheme for describing this class of situations is activated. A schema helps to assign data to a particular class. It is the scheme that contributes to sorting, distinguishing and encoding the signals perceived by the individual. A person evaluates and generalizes his experience through the prism of the schema.

Thus, the structuring and comprehension of life experience depends on which schemes a person uses. The circuit can remain passive for a long time, and then suddenly turn on as a result of some event (for example, stress). A person's reactions in a certain situation depend on which schemes are activated in him.

The inner child sees the world as frozen; he does not have access to the perception of an adult. The here and now adult is actually hypnotized by the schemas of the wounded inner child and his reactions have become automatic. He perceives the events taking place not as they really are here and now, but as they were once in the past. The resistance to the present causes his memory to go back to the past all the time. The founder of cognitive therapy, Albert Ellis, said: “The child convinces himself that some unpleasant events should not have happened ... and this supports him ...” Therefore, whatever we call it - a schema, a subpersonality, a false ego - we are talking about a frozen way perception, evaluation and action, characteristic of the inner child living inside the adult.

inner child

In fact, it can be said that the inner child is not alone at all - as well as numerous sub-personalities, false egos and schemas. There are many inner children living inside us, each of which is characterized by different perception, different degrees of consciousness, different attitudes, etc.

I don't mean "wonderful inner child", but a child endowed with a dark side. One of the purposes of this book is to help the reader to get in touch with this frozen childhood area of ​​memory that continues to create problems and see the world through a limiting, distorted, and uncomfortable lens.

Various psychotherapists try to change the perception of the inner child, reshape (reframe) him, "complete" his incomplete actions or protect him. The patient is asked to remember how the parents hurt the child, imagine this memory as a frozen picture, and then shrink down and go inside the picture in order to relive the traumatic experience. Many therapists bring in new beliefs at this point, such as: A real man able to handle it" or "People love me."

The intention of these therapists is to heal the inner child.

I propose something completely different.

quantum psychology

The first postulate of quantum psychology:

The observer creates his own inner reality.

You, as an observer of your own trauma, draw an image of it, hold it, penetrate it, merge with it, fall into a dream - and continue to play this recording again and again. Quantum psychology claims that you (the observer) yourself create and maintain the traumatized inner child. The observer does not create external reality. The observer creates a reaction to it. Therefore, the observer, who has fallen asleep and merged in his dream with his own memories, should be awakened in order to separate him from these memories.

This image, endowed with power and strength, is a memory that you (the observer) continue to cherish. It's just an old movie that you watch over and over again. I prefer to breathe new strength not into the inner child and not into memories, but into you - the viewer of the same old movie. Albert Ellis states: “It is your desire to get rid of bad memories gives them power - and not the memories themselves. For my part, I can say that the observer retains memories precisely because he resists them. Ellis, however, believes that the first "fusion" with memories was born of the thought: "This should not have happened."

Through the exercises in this book, you will become aware of how the inner child operates; then you can awaken the watcher and stop identifying yourself with the old trances. This will help you begin to identify with the observer, free from any trance, free you from the wounded inner child stuck in the past, and bring you fully into the present.

This book is about moving beyond trances, outdated strategies and beliefs created in childhood in an attempt to deal with chaos and confusion. The book contains many examples and exercises that will help you free yourself from the trances that control your life and do not allow you to be yourself. The exercises can also be used by psychotherapists when working with patients.

It is necessary to remind once again that there is more than one wounded child living inside of us. On the contrary, after each deep trauma, the observer creates a strategy (trance) and a character who will cope with chaos with the help of this strategy. Thus, in the soul of an adult there can be many inner children, and each of them has its own trance, strategy and appearance. That is why so many disputes and conflicting opinions arise in the thoughts of an adult. They are spoken by the wounded inner children, each of whom identifies with certain traumatic memories, strategies, and desires for attention. This explains why in psychotherapy the problem is not completely and finally solved after the identification and healing of the inner child. Following him comes new baby and introduces an adult into another problematic state, stubbornly suggesting to him: “This should not have happened to me!”.

This book is about how to go beyond the dark side of the inner child and its trances. The awakening of the observer (creator) of this child stops the creation and maintenance of trances. This is the true process of trojassing, or coming out of a trance. I hope this process brings you joy.

With love, Your brother Stephen

Chapter 1
Where did it start for me

For six years I lived in a monastery in India. Before that, I did psychotherapy and conducted trainings in Los Angeles. In India, I realized that meditation is an Eastern way to free oneself from the hypnosis of thoughts, feelings and emotions.

By dehypnotizing myself, I freed myself from the power of endless mental chatter.

New understanding of trance and hypnosis

Some people believe that the states of trance and hypnosis are the result of some kind of strong suggestion that tells a person to do something against their own will, and the source of the suggestion is another person (hypnotist). Sometimes hypnosis is considered something like a dream induced by a hypnotist with the aim of unhindered influence on a defenseless subject. "Trance" is defined in Webster's Dictionary as "a state of partial incapacity for action, prolonged immersion in oneself."

During the years of psychospiritual inner work I made sure that we are all already in a trance. We are hypnotized. Most people believe that trances are incompatible with our daily experience - but this is a misconception. It seems to people that ordinary life it is impossible to remain in a trance - but in reality, trance is able to absorb and digest any situation and any life experience. Deep in the mystery of trance and hypnosis lies the key to liberation from them.

I will give examples of stories ordinary people in a state of "enchantment".

The child is the subject, mom and dad are hypnotists. Parents inspire the child: “You won’t do this!”, “Please me - and I will please you!”, “If you do what I order, you will receive love and recognition from me; If you don't do it, you won't get it." The child (subject) falls into a trance state when he simply absorbs and absorbs these suggestions and begins to believe the statements of the parent hypnotists. Then the child firmly assimilates these suggestions and continues to support them in the soul of an adult. Takova dark side an inner child who, while remaining in the past, continues to hypnotize an adult in the present.

Years pass. The teacher or other authority figure makes statements that are similar to those of the parents. And so the subject (student) falls into the same trance of "fear" that he experienced in childhood. Some more time passes. He becomes an adult, falls in love and marries. And then the spouse becomes a hypnotist, keeping her husband's inner child in a state of trance "fear of aggression" or "fear of being abandoned."

When the suggestions are learned and the person lives in a trance, he is no longer a free person. He lost his freedom and integrity.

In our culture, we all live in a state of trance, and in almost any interpersonal relationships each of us is both a hypnotist and a hypnotized person.

The purpose of this book is to awaken you who are beyond trance.

Self-hypnosis and trance happen all the time. If you watch your thoughts for a while, you will surely find suggestions about how you should be, what you should do, what you are allowed to have.

For example, when you are in love, you can suggest to yourself, "She really loves me!", creating a pleasant and relaxed "She-really-loves-me" - a trance state. You can also tell yourself, “She will never give me what I want!”, creating an evil trance. You can tell yourself, “I know what my boss wants; he wants to deceive me!”, creating a trance of his own rightness.

All these recordings are played by the inner child in the adult brain. The child speaks in the voices and words of the parents, and years later he still keeps the adult under hypnosis.

How does this happen? Usually we create trances in childhood to cope with situations that are incomprehensible and beyond our control. Albert Ellis called it "creating deep masturbating beliefs with plenty of evidence." We decide that we can't, shouldn't, and can't handle it. This impotence keeps our resistance to what is happening. Tendency to think: “It shouldn’t be like this!” has a profound effect on our entire life experience. Albert Ellis jokingly called this addiction "masturbation."

For example, overprotective parents protect the child from any unpleasant situations. If he gets used to it, he finds himself in a trance of "detachment".

In any unpleasant situation, he turns off and withdraws into himself: at school, at work and in relationships with others.

A child raised in a family of alcoholics may use amnesia to forget a painful past. Later, his amnesia, or forgetfulness, will cause him many problems at school, at work and in love.

The child who has become a victim of incest is "disconnected" from the painful trauma. Later, he can turn off his senses during sexual intercourse. A woman is unable to experience an orgasm. The man suffers from premature ejaculation or impotence.

It should be understood that the trance created by the child is really an ability or skill that he uses to cope with a painful situation. Problems arise when the creation of trance gets out of control and the person begins to react purely mechanically. A childish trance in an adult's soul automatically puts him into the same state of stupor as in childhood, even if the adult does not want to be in a stupor at all. All this happens while the observer is asleep.

For example, I worked with a woman who was so beaten by her father that her body below the waist became insensible. It hurt her a lot. sexual relations with husband. She did not experience sexual sensations and could not achieve orgasm.

If you have ever reacted "automatically" (emotionally or verbally) - you can understand how the hypnotic suggestions of a child affect an adult. Your inner child automatically speaks words to you that put you in a trance. You start doing things that you don't want to do at all, or things that were appropriate at the time of childhood trauma, but do not make sense here and now.

The inner child has become your hypnotist, and the adult has become your hypnotized.

After returning from India in 1982, I returned to the practice of psychotherapy. I began to explore the trances of my patients and found that a lot of the problems were created by the inner child hypnotizing the adult. This inner child lived a separate life of his own dark side.

I began to dehypnotize myself. I have found that long hours of meditation are unsuitable for Western culture - they take too long. In addition, the meditators were in danger of losing their outside world. As will be shown later, meditation can be a dissociative technique used to forget about trauma and its accompanying pain, fear, and anger.

I wanted to develop a system that would include: a) the ability to dehypnotize oneself; b) keep in touch with the outside world. To create such a system, I used the basic concept of quantum physics: the observer of internal experience also participates in the creation of this subjective experience. In my previous book, Quantum Consciousness, this was explored quite deeply. In effect, the trauma observer creates his own response to the trauma. This often gives birth to an injured, traumatized child who hides into a trance state (such as insensibility) in order to somehow survive.

My inner child also created many coping strategies. The problem was that the child inside my adult was doing this while I was sleeping; naturally, these strategies are unsuitable for my present life.

In the following chapters, the various trances of the inner child will be explored in detail. This inner child, for which it has been customary to almost pray for so long, is a creation of the observer frozen in time. In other words, yours.

Summary

The next step is to examine and disassemble the frozen childhood trances and realize that you are the observer and creator of this character. Our goal is to free ourselves from childish survival mechanisms that are unusable at the present time. The next step has three steps:

1) Getting to know the dark side of your inner child that is currently hypnotizing you.

2) Studying this character and getting rid of him.

3) Awakening of the sleeping observer (you).

These steps will help you move past the frozen past and into the present.