EVERYONE’S HURTING ME!
Ow, Ow, Ow!

PREVIOUS: OUR WIC (Part 1) Raising ourselves

POSTS: The Introject /  Negative Benefits 

SITE:”When Your Inner Child is Running the Show“

WHO IS this INNER CHILD ?
Our Adapted Child (which everyone has) became our WIC by absorbing the Toxic Rules of our family, and is now determined to keep acting out the patterns we learned in our family & society (Repetition Compulsion), no matter how sick or self-destructive, by either being:

• Compliers – who are the good obedient adult-children, (over-responsible / people-pleasing) who are desperately trying to earn the family’s love they never got, who suffer a variety of stress-related illnesses from suppressing their own needs & emotions  (POSTS :” Secretly Angry ‘Nice People”
OR
• Rebellers – who feel compelled to copy their terrible training, but hate it & desperately try to resist. They are oppositional (always say NO, even when they want to say YES) in a futile attempt at disobeying the Toxic Rules & having some personal boundaries. But they do it in such self-defeating & self-destructive ways that end up causing even more harm!

Wounded Inner Child’s (WIC) in charge
We never learned from our family INTERNALLY to be a Healthy Adult or Loving Parent (The UNIT) to ourselves – our role models being mainly other people’s PP and WIC!
So when CoAs become adults, our Wounded Inner Child, in symbiotic slavery to the Bad inner Parents, is still the main persona running our life, in the form of the False Self.

The WIC in charge has kept us alive so far – but not well :
• it doesn’t really know what it’s doing, so it’s always faking it
• has learned to trust no one, even people who are OK
• is in endless terror, (consciously or not), from birth – on
• is stubbornly loyal to the family, even if it kills us
• is smothering the Natural Child with S-H & shame

✶ AND – is secretly very proud of it’s ability to survive the odds, which gives it a strong determination to keep the reins of power! Since it has no better inner guide to rely on, it is not going to let go just because we ask it to!
These are some reasons why Recovery is so long & difficult.

This cannot be stressed enough:
Without family-of-origin Recovery (FoO work), the WIC ego state still dominates our life** in all T.E.A. ways, with the deadly combination of S-H & fierce loyalty to the Negative Introject (PP), via Cognitive Distortions (CDs).
This is true even though, for many of us, our various defense mechanisms which are layered on top of the original damage – make it seem as if we’re managing ok.
But no matter how externally talented, successful, competent, & accomplished we may be – if our thinking & emotional reactions are mainly coming from an old place – we are still not psychologically free.

** So it’s inevitable that much of the time we’re emotionally immature in how we respond to people, places & things (PPT)!
Keep in mind: As long as we don’t have a fully functioning Loving Parent, plus a stronger Healthy Adult, the real voice in charge of us is the PP.

The easy way to tell which is which is by listening to how we talk to ourself —
a. the PP belittles us in the “YOU” form : “You should have known better. Why didn’t you_____”
b. the WIC in S-H always talks in the “I” form: “I’m such an idiot. I should _______ ”
The WIC consistently carries out the attitude & commands of the PP. So whether we’re in Rebel / defiant mode or playing Victim, we’re hooked into the family dynamic.

Without a Healthy Adult in charge:
• we don’t handle our life properly
• we let other people’s WIC or PP mistreat us
• the healthy Natural Child doesn’t get to develop & shine
• we can’t be the best we were born to be

Without a Loving Parent always available, the WIC:
• is at the mercy of our PP, with the damage it causes us
• is’s run by its S-H & distorted thinking
• feels constantly scared & vulnerable
• is terribly lonely & desperate to be rescued

NEXT: Abandonment Pain, Now #1