PREVIOUS: : Ego States – CHILD (#5)

PAC = Parent, Adult, Child
ES = ego states

2. ADAPTED CHILD (cont)
2a. BROADLY (Part 4)
2b. SYMPTOMS (Part 5)

2c. A DEEPER look
✿ 2nd Order – review  Basics #5

P1 = Parent-in-the-child —> Adapted Child
C1 = Child-in-the-child —> Natural Child
A1 = Adult-in-the-child —> Little Professor 

These 3 ego-states (P1, A1, C1) develop mainly in the right brain, via the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which could explain the child’s excitement & literal thinking. The Little Professor ego-state (A1) is responsible for decoding the world through intuition & analog thought, that will guarantee physical & emotional survival.

✿ 3rd ORDER (cont)
a. NORMAL development: As a specialized subsystem, C1 is very sensitive to physical & emotional internal stimulation, from birth & even before. While in the womb, along with experiencing their own physical development, the unborn child already perceives “the rhythms of their own body & those of the mother.”

This is when the Child in the Child (C1) begins forming subdivisions Po, Ao and Co. Child Zero is the biological child, with the instinctive part & reflex reactions to stimuli that are common to humans. Co is who we are when we’re born, rudimentarily formed for survival & sociability – the emerging self. 

The substructure designated as Ao begins to develop around the time of birth. It will be responsible for learning through experience. Adult Zero occurs when recognition of certain family stimuli begin, causing a strong enough emotional response to the mother by the Co aspect to be remembered. 

The beginning of the development of Po (Parent Zero) occurs when the baby begins to develop adaptive responses to the environment & it represents the incorporation of the Parent ego-state that relates to the most basic needs of the child. Messages related to Po are usually physical & nonverbal.
(MORE….[PDF] The Little Professor: Reflection on the Structure, Development and Evolution of the Adult in the Child)

b. WOUNDED  adults : The Negative Adapted Child (-AC) is the network-location of our accumulated trauma.

The PARENT ‘voice’ is always made up of a combination of all our important caretakers, usually one louder than the others. If those original people were very damaged, the 3 PACs of our Child’s Parent E.S (P1) will have unhealthy aspects. As very young children we incorporate their wounds into our version of a parent (Negative introject / PigP), all of which are internalize as if they were us!

X : The Child (C2) carries our original caretakers’ Parent’s (P1) = THEIR “Critical Parent”, the neural map containing all the negative parental rules & cognitive distortions they had about themselves (passed down from our grandparents….).
The younger we were when subjected to this aspect of our family, the more receptive / vulnerable we were to absorbing them…. which becomes our most entrenched Injunctions or Prohibitions (12  DON’Ts)

Y: Also in PI our adapted Child (C2) holds THEIR Angry/Defiant Child – the neural network we carry of our caretaker’s frustrated rage about their negative injunctions, reflected in our 8 – 12 yr-old self

Z: Our Child’s P1 includes THEIR Vulnerable Child – an energy map of our caretaker’s youngest self, mirrored by our 1 – 7 yr old, carrying all their woundedness – traumatic experiences, loneliness, self-hate & fear of abandonment

VERY IMP: This hidden set of E.S. (from our actual parents, now living in our PigP (P2) need to be identified & separated out from OUR actual experiences, since those which originally harmed our caretakers may not have happened to us

EXPs: A father orphaned very young, or mentally / emotionally scarred by serving in a war, a mother sexually molested as a child or battered in a relationship…… none of which happened to us.
Yet their unhealed pain & resulting harsh or neglectful treatment towards us were inevitably absorbed – as if we’d lived thru those events too!

🦋 Once we’re clear about what part of the baggage we’re carrying is theirs (P1 & Po), we can ‘pack it all up’ & give it back to them – symbolically. We have enough of our own, thank you very much!
This can be done over & over – until we’re less burdened, via visualizations, in drawings, 2-handed dialogue between Healthy Adult & PP, with Bio-energetics, Primal or Gestalt (2 chairs), psychotherapy, 12-Steps, Prayer….

NEXT: Child E.S. #7