Case
Jennifer is a young woman, 34 years old, ex successful gymnast from Spain. She worked hard for ten years during her teenager years. She was always very dedicated, seriously involved, and a hard worker to perform gracefully and successfully. Jenifer’s mother always supported her career as a gymnast. She grew up following a strict schedule with hard discipline and motivation to compete and prove good results. This little girl had to learn earlier how to handle self-pressure and stress by always being judged for her performance during her competitions and by being part of the national team. However, besides her hard work, this girl developed great skills of persistence, self-improvement, self-motivation, and constant action. Jennifer handled this environment but she couldn’t stand the inner pressure, so when she turned eighteen, she decided to quit and claim her freedom. She loved to perform and her best results were shown when she was had peace within.
Jennifer continued her life, finished college, got married, and become the mother of twin girls. Now they are five years old. She handles her life between her professional and personal life. She started the coaching sessions by complaining about her mood and her difficulty to deal with her ups and downs and with her perfectionism towards herself. She used to be harsh on the girls, her husband, or in her work environment. She had mood swings and discontentment in her tone of voice towards others and demanded from others, especially her daughters and husband. She mentioned she wanted to feel good again about herself.
I started to search about her life and asked her how she used to feel during the athletic period, in order to understand the mental patterns that used to run her life. She said she was always doing things to please external expectations. She wanted to feel accepted and loved by surrounding people, as well as her coach, who helped her as well as demanded great performance from her. Anyways, her old behavior was conflicting and disturbing her peace of mind and affecting her life today. She started to understand the reasons and I started to work on her primary relationship of her adult side and her inner child, which was under so much pressure and feeling sad, angry, and disappointed for having to follow the same old patterns when she was an athlete. Jennifer is very resilient, smart, and collaborative; she went deep into the process and started to look at her inner child in a different way. She founded out the importance to being more loving with her and wrote a letter to her: I applied an exercise of reflection. She wrote a letter for her inner child:
I will put myself into my counterpart and think of how I would feel about the experience/interaction I just said. … I am enough just the way I am.…It is out of out my control of how others respond or react to what I offer them.… Go your own path and there is no need any more to seek out or wait for any grads, you don’t need any measurement in figure anyone to be sure you succeed and is succeeding … good means for me the way I would like to be supported and treated. You are free now. I love you the way you are and you do not need to prove anything to me or others. You can be yourself, unconditionally.
She reflected a lot and started to behave more positively. Her mood and her peace of mind continued to be expressed and her energy increased.
Conclusion
We can decide to choose self-parenting in a better way; we can keep the healthier part of our parents and become Positive Healthy Inner Parents. It means becoming a “better edition” of our ancestors. Once we understand our inner conversation we become more capable to manage our behavior and transform our lives. By becoming more skillful and aware of our inner conversation, our emotional resilience expands. Self-parenting can be used as a tool to problem-solving Inner Conflicts, to self-nurture and meet our own needs rather than to seek outside or wait from others to fulfill yourself. By setting the same foundation as the healthy parents care about the child, a healthy self-parenting will eliminate negative aspects of your Inner Child and transform those aspects. This can be a great approach to apply to the coaching process and to promote a healthy self-esteem. This also gives the client support on how to manage emotional elasticity in order to work towards one’s favor. It is very rewarding to watch the client improve and move on to actions, when they bridge peace inside their mind and evolve. The basis for a good life quality and for an inner happiness lies in the healthy inner relationship between reasons and emotions, applied by a healthy dynamic between Inner Parent and Inner Child. This inner relationship will base all others and bring more awareness about the good care of ourselves physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally.
Reference:
Pollard, John K. Self-Parenting Malibu, CA: Generic Human Studies Publishing, 1987.
Bloomfield, Harold. Making peace with your parents, New York: Ballantine Books, 1983.
Cameron, Julia. Vein of god, New York: Putnam Book, 1996
Leman, Dr. Kevin. What your childhood memories say about you, Tucson: Tyndale House Publisher, Inc.
Mininni, Darlene PH.D., M.P.H. The Emotional Toolkit New York, St. Martin Press, 2005
Sher, Barbara. Wishcraft: how to get what you really want, New York: Ballantine Books, 1979.
Berne, Eric M.D. Games People Play: the Psychology of Human Relations; 1964 (1978 reprint, Grove Press, ISBN 0-345-17046-6); (1996 Paperback, ISBN 0-345-41003-3