Tell Your Inner Child To Just Keep Out Of This

I cant do anything with her, Mrs. Porter said plaintively, I am absolutely starting to lose it.

Starting? her husband asked with genuine surprise and a roll of the eyeballs. Listen, he confided in me, my wifes just as bad as our seven-year old when they get going. You should hear them.

Tell me more, I said to Mrs. Porter.

To be honest, she admitted, hes right. I dont know how it all degenerates, but something inside me goes haywire every single time Sabrina acts up, and all the wonderful parenting tricks youve taught us go right outside the window.

Guess what? I tell them, Youre not alone. Your brain is causing this and we can get you out of it! Its at this point that I explain a little bit about how the human brain works and why the best mechanisms it has to offer can mess you up later on in life. Efficiency is one of the most outstanding characteristics of the human brain. In neurobiological terms this means that when childhood memories are recorded for future use, those memories are stored in very rough categories. Harmful, for example, could describe the face of a toy doll that resembles a frightening dog. As a child, when youd see the doll-face, you might have gotten scared because it resembles the scary face of the big dog. As an adult, theres no logical reason in the world why you should become momentarily scared by a similar doll-face, but thats exactly what happens. Its all because your brain makes a hasty decision that a new stimulus belongs in a particular category. What it loses in logic, it gains in speed, and speed is of the essence when you need to protect yourself. Thus, if youre in a deserted street and you see a movement out of the corner of your eye, youll perhaps get startled. Thats good because that level of alertness could save your life.

So how does this apply to Mrs. Porter and her struggle with seven-year-old Sabrina?

Sabrinas antics would bring her mother right back to her own childhood. That is, without realizing it, her childs behavior evoked in her all the feelings that she had as a child herselfand all the reactions. When confronted with her own normal seven-year old behavior, Mrs. Porters parents didnt really know what to do. Her father would hit her and, even at the tender age she was, she swore she would never do that to a child of her own. Her mother would yell helplessly. Given the two choices, the helpless yelling seemed much kinder although it didnt really accomplish anything. With all that bad parenting, its a wonder Mrs. Porter grew up to be a fairly normal, nice adult. Throughout her childhood, all she knew was to yell back at her mother, whine, feel stupid, be wrong, and not enjoy whatever it was she was whining for anyway after her parents drained every drop of fun out of it. She did not have a sense of competency and success.

And that is precisely what was triggered in her brain when she was confronted with a whining, yelling, or in some other way challenging, little girl. Automatically and with great efficiency, her brain dredged up the unsuccessful responses she and her mother used when she was a child.

Theres been a lot of inner child therapy in the last couple of decades and its lovely. The inner child is that hurt little Mrs. Porter who couldnt get what she wanted and was scolded anyway. This inner child needs to heal. But even more vital to Mrs. Porters parenting, she (the inner child) needs to stay out of the adult Mrs. Porters way when she is trying to apply useful parenting strategies that she has learned. Easier said than done. The brain mechanism that launches the whining-and-yelling- Mrs. Porter is lightning quick and, as we said, not very accurate besides not being a reservoir of successful parenting memories. So we have, on the one hand, Mrs. Porters higher-functioning cerebral cortex brimming with wonderful techniques to work with her children, and on the other hand, her inner child reacting quite un-helpfully but quicker and more effectively than her cerebral cortex.

The strategy to get around this problem is to learn methods to buy time. If Mrs. Porter can slow the entire process down by, say, one whole minute, she wins. That is, her cerebral cortex (the thinking and rational part of her brain) wins over her inner child. Here are various strategies that people have used to buy themselves that minute:

1. Breathe deeply and peacefully as soon as tension starts and focus on the breathing. This miraculously disengages the automatic and unhelpful emotional response.

2. Say affirmations to oneself such as: I am a competent adult and I have a bunch of good tools that I can use. Repeat the affirmation slowly and firmly as necessary.

3. Recite inspirational messages to yourself.

4. Hum soothing melodies to yourself.

Mrs. Porter and I developed a list of the tools she would like to be able to use with her daughter and then practiced the breathing. I gave her a CD of a relaxation I created (which can be downloaded from my website for free in my "Self Help" section, here) and suggested she listen to that every day.

Meanwhile, Mr. Porter was not to be left out. Why, I wanted to know, did he roll his eyeballs instead of supporting his wife? Could it be that by being so superior he got to dump the problem of disciplining Sabrina on his wife? If so, that wasnt very fair, was it? He agreed it wasnt and we worked out a plan for him to be more involved. We decided to capitalize on his sense of humor to help both his wife and child learn to laugh at themselves and lighten up while in the thick of their tugs-of-war. All this could only work, of course, with Mrs. Porters cooperation, but she was happy to give it as she actually welcomed her husbands humor to de-stress situations.

In this way, Mrs. Porters cerebral cortex wins and her inner child is kept from making a mess of things.

Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn, Ph.D.Aleece Blog58258
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