Читать книгу Taming Your Outer Child - Susan Anderson - Страница 13
ОглавлениеYears ago, when I was writing my first book on abandonment I arranged meetings with my colleague and friend Peter Yelton to engage his fertile mind. I’d been searching for ways to help people overcome the deeply entrenched patterns that arise from unresolved abandonment and other experiences. Peter and I were groping for a word, a phrase, a concept to target those repetitive behaviors that interfere in people’s lives—not the emotional wounds, but the outward manifestations of those wounds, the behavioral warts and scars and habits that show on the outside. “Not the Inner Child,” we said aloud to each other, “but the . . . Outer Child!”
Naming the concept led to a fireworks display of new insights. As sparks of self-illumination came raining down on us, we were inspired to offer up our own worst traits to each other. Our revelations were alternately funny and shocking, and soon we were trying to outdo each other with the outrageousness of our Outer Child tendencies. Along the way we saw that the concept encapsulated a new level of insight about how our defense mechanisms and unconscious motivations function as a kind of embodied presence within the self, dividing us against ourselves. Peter and I could both see that here was an awareness tool with enough oomph to dismantle the whole infrastructure of self-sabotage.
I brought the Outer Child concept to one of my workshops as a test and saw it elicit the same explosions of insights for others, breaking through denial and opening the door for change.
I wish I could magically transport you to one of my workshops. Doing Outer Child work in a group is always such raucous, good fun. It’s everyone’s favorite activity—including mine. As soon as I begin explaining the concept, the group lights up. I post a list of Outer Child characteristics to help people get a sense of the scope and diversity of Outer’s machinations—how multifaceted, devious, and subtle its behaviors can be. After reviewing the list, people are quick to join in, topping one another with the outlandishness of their own Outer Child traits. The atmosphere in workshops is lighthearted, yet the depth of self-disclosure is unprecedented. People admit things to one another (even in larger groups) they have never before admitted to themselves or anyone else.
Let’s create a reader’s workshop right here. You already have some idea about what your own Outer Child is up to, at least its more prominent behaviors. Below I’ll present a list of some of Outer’s common tendencies and later look at what might be going on emotionally (within your Inner Child) to trigger them.
The idea is to take a sideways glance at your own Outer Child’s behaviors. By the way, you’ll want to situate your Adult Self squarely in the driver’s seat, because Outer Children hate this kind of assessment—they’re by nature extremely defensive—so we’d rather not have any at this party.
REMIND YOU OF ANYONE?
Remember that no one’s keeping score here; we’re just taking a broad look at the remarkable and sometimes ridiculous things we do to get in our own way. You’re most likely to see your Outer Child acting out when your Inner Child is tired, cranky, or stressed. Any number of triggers can arouse Outer’s antics, including having an argument with a friend, losing your keys, or feeling overworked. People with extremely stressful, traumatic childhoods tend to have easily stressed-out Inner Children and their Outer Children use this as license to act out.
Ready? Have a quick read through the list below and see if you don’t find a few of these traits familiar. Outer Child . . .
Is excessive
Outer is the addict, the alcoholic, the one who runs at the mouth and does everything to extreme.
Outer has a hole in its pocket when it comes to either anger or money. Outer must spend.
Outer loves chocolate and convinces you that bingeing on it is good for your heart. Likewise with wine.
Outer is the hidden “Chuckie” of the personality. Even the nicest people we know overreact like a 10-year-old with a full-blown conduct disorder (perhaps not in public) when they feel even slightly rejected, dismissed, abandoned.
Is a drama queen
Outer thrives on crisis and chaos.
Outer enjoys playing the victim; that is, when not playing the martyr.
Outer underreacts when a friend steps on your toes, pretending to be gracious—“Oh, that’s all right”—but holds on to resentment for decades.
Outer uses crying as a manipulation. But this ploy is so automatic, primitive, and unconscious, if you call Outer on it, it cries louder.
Outer provokes anger in its subtle ways and then accuses the other person of being abusive.
Outer loves to play the injured party.
Outer acts submissive so it can seethe at being dominated.
Loves distraction
Outer makes huge messes that take forever to clean up. Outer distracts you from things you’re trying to get done.
Outer uses projection as a defense. Outer projects your shortcomings onto other people to keep the heat off of itself.
Outer is like Cleopatra: Queen of da Nile. In fact, denial is Outer’s favorite defense mechanism. If all else fails, just deny it.
Is uncompromising (for no good reason)
Outer is a fairness-junkie. It fights valiantly for what it considers fair. Outer has been known to commit injustices (or declare war) in the name of fairness.
Outer can be a perfectionist. Perfectionism, for Outer, is a form of bargaining: Outer is saying, “If I do this perfectly, I merit a reward.” Outer’s perfectionism contains a built-in vise grip; if you don’t get rewarded, Outer’s iron fist may protrude through its velvet glove.
Outer can be self-spiteful—make you miserable in order to punish someone else. For instance, Outer can keep you heartbroken forever just to prove the injustice of the breakup. As illogical, primitive, and totally self-defeating as you know this to be, Outer continues its spiteful siege against you.
Is completely devoted—to itself
Outer is devoted to its own self-interests. Outer is the self-centered part we all share; it’s just that some of us hide this selfish part better than others.
Outer is reactive rather than active or reflective. It is defensive rather than open to feedback, self-justifying rather than self-aware.
Loves the blame game
Outer specializes in blame. When Outer loses something, it blames it on one of your children.
Outer revels in taking other people’s inventory. It has a negative attraction to their faults. Outer happens to be especially obsessed with and intolerant of other people’s Outer Children. If you have an uncomfortable feeling, Outer needs to find somebody else at fault.
Outer enjoys making the other person wrong. Sometimes Outer makes the other person pay (even though he may be entirely innocent).
Outer talks about your friends behind their backs. Outer hates it when your friends talk behind your back.
Is a master of disguises
Outer acts pure and innocent to show other people up.
Outer will use almost any diversionary tactic, no matter how convoluted or unattractive, to keep your vulnerability out of sight. For instance, Outer hates asking for either help or directions. It would rather get you frustrated or lost.
Because your Inner Child so fears abandonment, your Outer Child developed a pleasing persona—but the only reason to please anyone as far as Outer’s concerned is to prevent them from rejecting you. Outer finds someone who is easy to take for granted and then treats her badly since it no longer has to worry about being abandoned. When this fear is dormant, your true personality can emerge; you no longer have to charm and seduce the other person.
When Outer does something mean or selfish, it hides behind altruism, moral superiority, righteous indignation, and benevolence.
Outer can express your anger by becoming inconveniently passive.
Outer has a favorite disguise: compliance. Outer uses compliance to confuse others into thinking it doesn’t want control. But don’t be fooled—Outer Child is a control freak.
Outer has a split personality—it splits its personality between home and office: nice at office, a tyrant at home . . . or vise versa.
Outer is an award-winning actor that believes its own act. This makes it challenging to recognize the true face of your Outer Child or anyone else’s. Since other people’s Outer Children are so well disguised, you may have thought you were the only one with an Outer Child.
Outer tries, but the truth is, you can’t hide your Outer Child from your spouse or children. They get to see the real you—bad habits, tirades, and all. In fact, we could redefine intimacy as the mutual exposure of our Outer Children.
Is demanding
Outer is a people pleaser with ulterior motives. It will give others the shirt off your back. But what does it expect in return? Everything.
Outer seeks emotional salve from others.
Outer can’t stand waiting, especially waiting for that special someone to call. It loves to test new lovers to the limit. One of its favorite games is hard-to-get. Rather than endear you to your lovers, though, Outer’s games leave your partners confused, agitated, and fed up.
Outer is always looking for love insurance and refuses to believe there is no such thing. For instance, Outer might chase after someone who is very hard up and become his “caretaker” in hopes of becoming so valuable that the poor slob will never want to leave you. But this strategy backfires like all of the others; you wind up abandoned again.
Wants it, and wants it now
Outer is highly principled, but the only principle it obeys is the pleasure principle.
Borrowing from author Elizabeth Gilbert in her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, when heartbroken, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.
When it comes to self-improvement programs, Outer wants to skip the work and get straight to the benefits. Outer prefers to learn in pill form rather than have to do something constructive, like go through the steps of a linear process (like this program). Outer lies back, holding out for the next magic pill.
Loves the getting, not the having
As one workshop attendee so cleverly put it, Outer is an environmentalist when it comes to pursuing women (or men)—it just likes to tag them and then throw them back in.
Outer can be very cunning and put its best foot forward when pursuing a new lover. It seems the picture of altruism, decency, kindness, and tolerance. It becomes seductive, funny, charming, full of life, deeply interested in the other person’s life. But once it catches its prey, it suddenly clams up, becomes cold, critical, intolerant, irritable, and sexually withholding. Outer makes us pity the person willing to love us.
Outer can’t resist the emotional candy of pursuing an emotionally challenging lover. Outer thinks unavailable people are sexy. This goes against what’s good for your Inner Child, who needs someone capable of giving love, nurturance, and commitment. But then, since when does Outer Child care about what’s good for Inner Child?
Is all about surface
Outer can’t commit because it’s always “looking to trade up.” It is plagued with bigger-is-better syndrome.
Outer is attracted to people’s form rather than substance. Outer finds status and external beauty more attractive than integrity or kindness.
Outer tries to get self-esteem by proxy—it tries to attract someone higher than you in the pecking order.
Outer identifies with Groucho Marx: It would never join any club that would have you as a member.
Thinks it’s my way or no way
Outer doesn’t obey the golden rule. Outer obeys its own Outer Child rule: Get others to treat you as you want to be treated, and treat others as you feel like treating them.
Outer is never wrong and must never be told so, or it will break something.
Outer keeps up an endless protest against any reality it doesn’t want to accept. It can stay in protest mode no matter how hard you try to let go. It sustains a tenacious protest against loss, homework, annual checkups, taxes, rejection, global warming, and death.
Outer believes laws and ethics are for everybody else. It obeys rules only to avoid getting caught.
Outer doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice intimacy in search of satisfying its own desires. In fact, it does its best to defeat the two major tasks of intimacy: Task one is to get your Inner Child to become friends with your mate’s Inner Child. Task two is to make sure you don’t take each other’s Outer Children too personally. But Outer prefers to beat up on your mate’s Inner Child and goes head-to-head with her Outer Child.
To borrow from Elizabeth Gilbert again, Outer believes what it wants to believe. It has a wishbone where it should have a backbone.
These and many other Outer Child issues will be explored in depth in the chapters to come. But let’s highlight a few of them now to look at some of the triggers that set them in motion.
OUTER WANTS EVERYTHING THE EASY WAY—IN PILL FORM, IF POSSIBLE
Your Inner Child could be feeling hopeful about the possibility of having a better life (as a result of reading this book) but also impatient, helpless, worried that it might never happen—all normal Inner Child feelings. In the Adult Self’s hands, these feelings become motivation to create positive change. But your Outer Child prefers to act out these feelings by seeking quick fixes. Outer balks at having to go step by step through any process that takes time. It tries to convince you that awareness is enough—that insight alone is magic, that it’s not necessary to have to actually do anything differently. You just have to sit and read and think and feel about yourself and you will have a breakthrough and your behavior patterns will spontaneously change for the better and your life will turn into a bowl of cherries.
Your developing Adult Self realizes that you resolve long-standing issues not by thinking or talking your way out of them, but by doing your way out. In fact, learning to tame your Outer Child is a lot like learning to swim, do yoga, or play tennis. You can read all you want about the technique but the only thing that improves your game is actually doing it. Practicing. And lo and behold, you get better at it! When your Adult Self overrules Outer’s insistence that insight gets your behavior to change spontaneously, then you’re ready to take action.
THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS
Your Inner Child is afraid people won’t like you if they can see your selfishness. Yet Inner can’t help but stay focused on its own feelings and needs; it just doesn’t want to be criticized for it. Maybe one of your parents called you selfish during your childhood and it hurt and confused you. You tried to hide your self-interests and felt guilty for having them.
Now as an adult, you see other people get away with selfish behavior—and perhaps your Inner Child is resentful and envious that it doesn’t have the guts to do the same. Your Outer Child takes these perfectly normal feelings and uses the emotional energy to point the finger at others.
The truth is that self-centeredness is not something to be ashamed of—in fact, it’s universal to the human condition. Everybody has this self-serving part, so why not you or me? After all, if you’re not looking out for your most basic emotional needs, who will? By identifying and recognizing these needs for what they are, you become enlightened.
Self-interest hails from a primal, primitive place built into the mammalian brain (the stomping grounds of your Outer Child). The function of this primitive part of the brain is to promote the biological and emotional needs of the self. Your Adult Self’s role is to identify the self-driven part without causing shame. No one’s indicting you, the whole person, for having these perfectly normal needs. But by identifying this part of yourself, you will no longer be unconsciously motivated by it. You can now make conscious choices based on self-acknowledgment rather than self-denial. Owning up to the primitive Outer Child trait of selfishness rather than denying it, masking it, rationalizing it, or projecting it onto others offers a real boon to your personal growth.
As Joe, a former workshop attendee, puts it this way:
Outer Child was like a jolt of self-awareness. I’d always prided myself on NOT being selfish. But learning that we all have a self-centered part and that we all have an Outer Child was freeing. Now instead of accusing everyone else of selfish motives, I am more prone to catch myself in the act. It allows me to take a step back, maybe laugh about it, make amends if it’s appropriate, grow a little more self-aware, and move on. It’s helping me evolve to a higher place. I’m a work in progress.
COMING CLEAN
What might your Inner Child be feeling when your Outer Child makes a mess of things? How about nervous about how you’re going to make ends meet now that you’ve left your job and your Outer Child has stalled about finding a new one? Or how your boss will respond to the proposal that is now a month overdue?
Or maybe you’re just craving pleasure; your day wasn’t rewarding enough. So right in the middle of a project, Outer Child goes off to rest, eat, or call a friend instead of letting you finish what you’re doing. Or it might go deeper. Your Inner Child may have an undercurrent of anxiety or depression stemming from old wounds. Your Outer Child is reacting by forestalling real work with self-soothing quick fixes.
Your developing Adult Self learns how to recognize Inner Child’s feelings and conduct an internal dialogue that soothes and assuages your underlying needs so that you can delay gratification to get your work done. Having postponed your Inner Child’s needs, your Adult Self must eventually follow through and gratify them in a healthy way, like eating a nutritious snack or reading the next chapter of a good book. We all need to take breaks from hard work; you’ll read more about how to do that kind of self-nurturing in Part Two.
PEOPLE PLEASING
In your childhood, your parents may have been emotionally unavailable due to any number of reasons—alcoholism, grief, workaholism—and you groveled for their attention and love. You felt worthless and inadequate when you were not able to get them to parent you. Outer Child runs with these long-standing feelings of worthlessness and re-creates that same dynamic in your adult relationships. In other words, you chase after people who don’t, can’t, or won’t give you what you need. When Inner Child feels needy, Outer springs into action to practice what it knows best—its excellent groveling skills. Practicing scratches the itch of the old pain, but that only aggravates the rash. There are better ways to connect with other people, as you’ll read about in chapters on relationships in Part Three.
DRIVEN TO EXCESS
Your Inner Child desires pleasurable things like love, connection, and fun. Outer Child finds that satisfying its sweet tooth is the most immediate way to get pleasure—it’s instantaneous! Outer, the hedonist, is a champion of pleasure and will valiantly smuggle cookies to your bedroom, especially when you’re dieting.
Your developing Adult Self learns to gratify its need for pleasure in more substantial ways, such as developing a new relationship or building a new career, rather than relying on quick fixes that are not good for your health, reputation, or waistline.
ALL THE WORLD’S YOUR STAGE
What’s with all the Outer Child drama? In acting out Inner Child’s feelings, you would think your Outer Child was preparing for a career on the stage! Inner Child may have a whole backlog of feelings stemming, perhaps, from having been raised by dysfunctional, neglectful parents, and Outer takes these feelings and uses adult circumstances as a stage on which to reenact the same dynamics. This is Outer’s way of externalizing your internal feelings. So, for example, your boyfriend has a habit of cheating on you, but instead of moving on, you catch him over and over again, each time enacting your long-standing angst of unrequited love with a live person. He’s a substitute for the parent who abandoned your needs in childhood. Or you drive a malfunctioning jalopy instead of a more reliable car, and—surprise, surprise—it breaks down a lot. Your “incompetent” mechanic then becomes the perfect target for your feelings of helplessness and frustration.
People, places, and things become props on Outer’s melodramatic stage.
Your developing Adult Self knows what is going on inside and becomes self-constructive—no need to create dramas involving other people, as you’ll read in the chapter on Trauma in Part Two.
SHE’S SO . . .
Sometimes Outer Child behavior is anything but deep-seated. Inner Child might simply be cranky from a long day’s toil, so Outer goes looking for someone to use as a scratching post.
Or it might go deeper. You might be feeling frustrated with yourself for not landing that new client, or for carrying around those extra twenty pounds for the last decade. When that sort of self-criticism simmers inside, your Outer Child may eventually displace feelings onto other people. “Why can’t he get it together and find a steady job?” “She’s so inconsiderate; there she is, late again.” Your Adult Self recognizes your fault-finding as a warning sign. It reminds you to focus on improving your own life conditions in order to meet your Inner Child’s needs in more substantial ways.
PERFECTION IS A TRAP
When Outer Child insists that nothing but perfection will do, your Inner Child might be feeling empty, disconnected, or worthless. Maybe as a child you felt left out, perhaps resentful of one of your siblings for being the “special” one or grabbing more attention. So your Outer Child takes these longstanding feelings of jealousy and inadequacy and acts them out by trying to be perfect. There’s still a chance to steal the spotlight from your older brother (the smarter, taller, more popular one), isn’t there? Of course, you’re no longer in competition with anyone but yourself!
Situation: You’re planning to go to a party, but you haven’t been shopping in months. There’s nothing spectacular enough in your closet to wear. Clothes you liked yesterday are suddenly hideously passé. If you can’t find the perfect outfit, you’re not going. You’d rather stay home and feel miserable.
Your Adult Self finds a middle ground by accepting the fact that we all have imperfections, shortcomings. We are all bent twigs. The knuckles, knots, and bends in your twig are what give your personality its special contour and distinctiveness. If perfectionism is one of your traits, rather than be ruled by it, accept it as a part of your Outer Child portfolio, and balance this trait with wisdom coming from your more reasonable, self-accepting higher self.
TEMPER, TEMPER
Anger is Outer’s favorite emotion, because anger is so energizing. And self-justifying! When your Inner Child feels angry, your Outer is charged to do something about it. Anger is Outer’s excuse to strike out. It becomes bloodthirsty; its rampage is fueled by adrenaline and other brain chemicals that increase your impulsivity and decrease your reasoning capacity.
Anger is not a primary, but a secondary emotion. First comes pain. When you stub your toe, it hurts: pain. Then you scream in anger because the pain makes you angry. Pain first, anger second. When something in your life creates chronic emotional pain (failed attempts to start a new career, a partner who withholds emotionally), you might direct your anger at the person triggering it or any inanimate object that gets in your way.
Being rejected by a loved one can create abandonment rage, which can trigger Outer Child’s most destructive, dangerous, and self-justifying behaviors. In the extreme, abandonment rage has been responsible for some of the most infamous headline-grabbing murder-suicides. You might remember the case of the man who, in a jealous rage, set fire to the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx, killing 87 people.
Your developing Adult Self knows that anger is head-bending. So when you become angry, Adult takes precautions, learns how to assume complete responsibility for your behavior, learns to avoid alcohol and other substances that reduce one’s control, learns how to nurture and calm this most volatile of emotions.
BENEATH IT ALL
Why, when we’re faced with a new challenge, does our Outer Child pitch a hissy fit? Since when did the failure to assemble a futon frame spell the end of the world? Your Inner Child might be feeling frustrated or inadequate and beset with primal abandonment fear, the fear of being deemed unworthy of love and left behind. This primitive fear is residual of our Clan-of-the-Cave-Bear days, when banishment or abandonment meant death.
Your developing Adult Self realizes that your helplessness is learned helplessness and knows that you must calm down so that you can use your cognitive resources to override this learned response and accomplish the task—whether it’s hanging those shelves or learning to apply the tools of the Outer Child program. Adult also knows it can ask for help.
And help is on its way. Next, in Part Two, as we continue exploring your Outer Child behavior and what motivates it, I’ll guide you through a program for overcoming all your self-sabotaging behaviors.
In the meantime, keep tabs on your Outer Child. To this day, I still keep a daily inventory of my own Outer Child characteristics. It helps me stay honest, in tune with myself, and motivated to keep my higher self in the lead. One of my most productive Outer Child insights involved locating evidence of egotism that was hiding out in my seemingly humble demeanor. I thought I had already gotten rid of most of my egotism, but as I peeled away the layers, I saw it. The clarity proved to be both humbling and empowering. For instance, I noticed, because now I wanted to notice, that sometimes I assumed I understood something when in fact I had not understood it.
Owning up to this trait didn’t make me want to beat myself up because I figured if I had it, my colleagues had it, Freud probably had it, and just about everybody had it, at least to some extent. I was just grateful for being able to detect it in myself. Thank you, Outer Child! This new awareness helped me look beyond my own egotism to see my egotism.
I started to have multiple sightings of this Outer Child trait. For instance, I’d catch myself nodding my head in a knowing way as if to say “I understand,” when in fact I hadn’t. I noticed this happening when doctors used medical terminology in giving me test results or when someone expressed a complex worldview. I realized that I’d walked away perplexed instead of asking for clarity. I saw how this behavior caused so much going on around me to remain unquestioned and poorly understood. In correcting this, I began learning new things by leaps and bounds, but it meant first acknowledging my ignorance to myself and then, of course, to others.
I don’t know exactly at what point in my life this presuming to know set in—probably becoming a psychotherapist gave it a good boost—but I do know that this Outer Child trait had been hiding out in my Adult persona, protecting my insecure feelings and serving my egotism quite nicely. I also know that when I can’t tell the difference between understanding something and thinking I understand it, it blocks me from knowing more. Catching myself in the act of presuming to understand got me to delve further into many truisms I had taken for granted. What a gift. Discovering my Outer Child helped me penetrate the surface reality of things and take a giant step forward as a theoretician and person.
Here’s an example relevant to doing the research for this book. It got me to continually question the assumptions I was making about exactly how Outer functioned within the personality. Thanks to my new awareness, I’d peel away another layer of assumption, take a second look, and realize there was something about Outer’s underpinnings that still eluded me. For instance, I discovered I wasn’t exactly sure where Outer’s outbound energy derived from. So I removed yet another layer of preconceived assumption and asked myself more probing questions. I dug further into the newly unfolding neurobiological research, seeking help from research mentors, and consulted again with co-creator of the Outer Child concept, Peter Yelton. In this digging, questioning manner, I was able to penetrate many uncertainties I had about Outer Child (the hardest part was realizing I had uncertainties) and to admit to the ones I still had.
It was in this tentative, searching manner that I was able to resolve the conundrum about how it’s possible to have emotional insight but not know how to use it. I slowly honed specialized power tools that allow you to actually use your insight. The solution involved trial and error, and realizing error when I saw it.
Presuming to know was just one facet of my Outer Child persona. I have identified hundreds of others (none terribly flattering). If you add up all of my Outer’s features, they’d tell the backstory about the many ways I manage to get in my own way. Many of these discoveries are included in The Outer Child Inventory posted on my website www.outerchild.net.
As you discover the unique maneuvers of your own Outer Child, please send them to me. Contributions from around the world help me continue building the Outer Child Inventory. It’s clear the concept has an enormous impact on people’s lives.
Remember, you don’t want to bind and gag your Outer Child. It will only fight harder to act out. It’s when you acknowledge your Outer Child and learn constructive ways to use its energy that your life begins to change.
