Setting boundaries with inner child
Most therapies focus on nurturing the wounded inner child. However, the care part is just the first step of healing the inner child.
Next step, we need to learn to set boundaries with the inner child, but also with the “critical parent” part of ourselves.
The inner critical parent is the voice that tells us it’s wrong to feel a certain feeling, we don’t have time for this and that, we’re too weak if we feel a certain way, we need to be different, we’re not good enough. Mostly it’s a judging voice we hear in our head.
The inner child is the voice that dreams about nice things.
Setting boundaries with the critical parent means you’re not giving into the criticism. Just recognize the voice for what it represents and allow it to give you the show it does. Let go of trying to push it away, change it, make it go disappear.
Setting boundaries with your inner child means that when they have unrealistic expectations to not build up their expectations more. Also when they want to have instant gratification, you explain to them why that is not healthy and good and you accept their pain of not having it.
Let’s try a more concrete example of this.
When the inner child says “I want to eat a full bag of chips and 4 snickers bars now”.
The critical parent could say “No, you can’t have that” OR “That’s stupid, why would you want to eat like that?” OR “What’s wrong with you? You have a problem”.
Remember, you don’t give into the criticism and start beating yourself up (boundaries with the critical parent).
And you have to be kind and gentle with the inner child explaining the perspective of eating unhealthy foods, they will feel sick. You have to understand that the inner child is exactly like a child and does not have yet the understanding and the emotional regulation that an adult has. It can feel like life or death to them, but then 20 minutes later they have forgotten and gone on to something else. They don’t know how to handle frustration and negative feelings, they might just express them and you might feel overwhelmed at that point. It’s ok, you need to learn to be present to your feelings, allow them space to be, love them as they are and let them go.
This is a healthy way of connecting to both parts, integrating them and doing what is good for your adult self afterwards.
The main goal of healing your inner child is to improve your overall quality of life.
The more these parts within you are rejected, they become islands within your psyche, disconnected from your self and then they rule your life.
As Jung was saying
