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Taming Your Outer Child

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fear of being deemed unworthy of love and left behind. — location: 686 ^ref-23200

your helplessness is learned helplessness — location: 687 ^ref-20808

override this learned response and accomplish the task— — location: 688 ^ref-52376

loss of love — location: 792 ^ref-54928

a job, — location: 794 ^ref-53737

echoes of past hurts whenever you feel a hint of rejection — location: 796 ^ref-12440

The longer you procrastinate, the more your anxiety and inhibition can escalate. — location: 886 ^ref-2069

Avoidance — location: 886 ^ref-38829

procrastination, — location: 886 ^ref-58002

isolation, — location: 887 ^ref-11010

inertia — location: 887 ^ref-52974

ways we abandon ourselves. — location: 887 ^ref-48882

heightened vulnerability you feel is involuntary. — location: 895 ^ref-13088

amygdala declares a state of emergency, — location: 907 ^ref-12915

while you are avoiding, your fears are secretly gaining strength — location: 913 ^ref-21042

it’s time to stop avoiding, worrying, and self-blaming— — location: 917 ^ref-25246

I had no confidence in me, so why should anyone else? — location: 980 ^ref-20195

I acted like I thought I was a pretty together dude — location: 981 ^ref-11662

manner came across as hollow. — location: 984 ^ref-64707

I was ashamed of being ashamed. — location: 985 ^ref-21005

I’d hit bottom and come face-to-face with my self-loathing once again, petrified that I would die a loser. — location: 986 ^ref-49570

anxiety, self-doubt, and inadequacy, — location: 988 ^ref-19263

know my performance at work is excellent but I haven’t been able to get it across. — location: 1038 ^ref-47242

perhaps wakeful at night. — location: 1606 ^ref-22120

USING THE PRESENT TO HEAL THE PAST — location: 1642 ^ref-22442

Heightened emotional arousal — location: 1859 ^ref-57375

The development of repetitive behaviors — location: 1861 ^ref-588

overreact to hidden emotional triggers. — location: 1865 ^ref-59142

repeat self-defeating behaviors. — location: 1868 ^ref-40252

hidden emotional triggers — location: 1869 ^ref-52196

memory gaps. — location: 1869 ^ref-17814

repetitive behavior. — location: 1870 ^ref-36326

retraumatizing patterns to free yourself from their stronghold. — location: 1885 ^ref-47007

procrastination. — location: 1903 ^ref-58516

procrastinating makes you feel bad about yourself. — location: 1903 ^ref-35102

Does this bad feeling remind you of times in your childhood when perhaps you didn’t live up to your parents’ expectations? Could your tendency to procrastinate be re-creating the emotional climate of your childhood? — location: 1903 ^ref-58838

avoid confrontation. — location: 1905 ^ref-41964

Do you remember times when you couldn’t stand up for yourself? — location: 1906 ^ref-19962

avoiding confrontation in your current life, are you retraumatizing yourself? — location: 1907 ^ref-52170

keep you in the same double bind? — location: 1910 ^ref-30946

resuscitate emotions from your childhood when you felt foolish or guilty for creating a problem? — location: 1911 ^ref-59777

fear and helplessness and hurt— — location: 1917 ^ref-2147

if the itch is helplessness, the scratch is the brain’s attempt to grab control, to regain its balance. But — location: 1959 ^ref-4500

just having a lever of control—a psychological handle—reduces the stress of having no control. — location: 1974 ^ref-27318

A lever — location: 1977 ^ref-48801

of control (even if it is only symbolic) reduces the impact of helplessness on brain functioning. — location: 1977 ^ref-9943

The support of a companion (analogous to a “lever of control”) helped reduce their stress. — location: 1983 ^ref-34915

when we’ve given up (we feel helpless), we produce higher stress hormones than when we’re still fighting — location: 1986 ^ref-25783

children who’ve been traumatized have a tendency to give up easily. — location: 1988 ^ref-47506

these children try to get us to give up on them too (by trying our patience). It’s one of their repetition compulsions. — location: 1989 ^ref-23082

Unpredictability is a significant factor in helplessness. — location: 1997 ^ref-50170

Being unable to predict a windfall ultimately threatens one’s sense of control. You wonder why you’re on edge and can’t sleep, so you surmise “something must be wrong” when actually it’s just the opposite. Something is right—you just didn’t expect it! — location: 2002 ^ref-39831

When a baboon is stressed he generally takes it out on another baboon of lower social standing. If he’s the low man on the totem pole, he produces higher stress hormones, gets ulcers, and can’t learn. — location: 2006 ^ref-55284

mammals use “scapegoats” to reduce their stress and restore their sense of balance. — location: 2009 ^ref-13907

unconsciously driven by the need to gain a lever of control. — location: 2011 ^ref-3129

any creature unlikely to effectively fight back. — location: 2012 ^ref-63276

provides more productive outlets for your frustration to help you lower your stress hormones and increase your adult functioning. — location: 2012 ^ref-37604

intrusive emotional memories that float free from their original context. — location: 2019 ^ref-1295

Dissociated emotional memories are also accompanied by the numbing and blunting of other sensations. — location: 2021 ^ref-6627

Since these mental states are opiate-induced, they’re addictive states to which you return again and again. — location: 2031 ^ref-22617

chronic waves of aroused emotions (anxiety, sadness, panic) dissociated from the events that caused them, while at the same time you feel numb to life going on around you. — location: 2032 ^ref-36212

unable to get inside the flow of your experience, trapped in an uncomfortable, post-traumatic, emotional stupor. — location: 2034 ^ref-18639

reenacting her traumatic scenario to break through the layers of numbing and blunting caused by post-trauma stress— — location: 2042 ^ref-57382

Is it our way of breaking through layers of numbing and blunting that prevent us from feeling life? — location: 2044 ^ref-7858

we are addicted to the opioid-induced numbing and dissociation that accompany the drama. — location: 2060 ^ref-63907

Reenacting the trauma also warns the tribe (gene pool): Don’t go here! — location: 2063 ^ref-13765

We repeat trauma to try to get it right this time. — location: 2064 ^ref-39470

use tools that deal directly with the emotions and behaviors of our current life. — location: 2072 ^ref-42048

separation therapy, guided visualization, and goal-fulfilling behaviors. — location: 2082 ^ref-23946

unpredictability is another stressor. — location: 2097 ^ref-16042

Show your pet some love; devote the affectionate cuddling to your intention to reach your goals. — location: 2237 ^ref-61439

what if the boss treats you unfairly? Can you make the conflict go away by avoiding — location: 2745 ^ref-52358

People who harbor a lot of negative feelings about themselves tend to avoid their responsibilities and become inured to extremely negative consequences. Things have to reach catastrophic proportions before they are “forced” to finally do something about it. — location: 2746 ^ref-58151

I obsessed about this for weeks, felt sick over it, wanted to send it, but never did. — location: 2800 ^ref-51265

repetition compulsions where they abandon themselves over and over by not taking care of their needs. — location: 2807 ^ref-31755

procrastinators have important but neglected feelings. — location: 2808 ^ref-44054

radically listening to their Inner Child, — location: 2813 ^ref-51068

I resent having no one to take care of me, so I waste a lot of energy NOT taking care of things. — location: 2821 ^ref-27333

the first thing you come up against is procrastination. — location: 2829 ^ref-47822

Where there is procrastination, there is a frustrated, helpless, neglected, abandoned Inner Child waiting for your compassionate attention. — location: 2830 ^ref-42326

•  avoid acting on her good intentions — location: 2834 ^ref-19731

•  invest her time in menial tasks — location: 2835 ^ref-58994

•  downplay her true abilities — location: 2837 ^ref-62810

•  manage her time poorly (chronically — location: 2838 ^ref-61974

late) — location: 2839 ^ref-62672

low self-esteem, poor self-control, low self-confidence, and she’s also a perfectionist. — location: 2842 ^ref-27902

She was wracked with guilt and exasperated with her own inertia. — location: 2845 ^ref-25558

If you cared about me, you’d get things done so I wouldn’t feel so bad. — location: 2851 ^ref-4725

How does Little feel when you put things off? — location: 2867 ^ref-11170

the overt procrastinations that nag at you and make Little You feel guilty and anxious. — location: 2870 ^ref-22171

things you don’t realize you’re procrastinating about, the things you avoid thinking about—perhaps an abandoned goal or dream. — location: 2871 ^ref-620

Which ones have you avoided thinking about because you feel their time has expired? — location: 2873 ^ref-9698

what you do in your current life to avoid living that dream. — location: 2889 ^ref-64010

Ask yourself if the lifestyle you currently live is one you would have designed intentionally. Or did it just fall into place through a serious of defaults, happenstances, expediencies, necessities, and old habits? Rebecca shares her story: — location: 2890 ^ref-8251

It had been easier taking orders from strangers—my clients—than dealing with my daughter’s “tude” toward me. — location: 2902 ^ref-38574

Is it possible that you unknowingly set up your current life to distract you from working on your personal issues and goals? — location: 2906 ^ref-31717

Does your Outer Child use procrastination to block you from fulfilling your greatest desires? — location: 2907 ^ref-30372

radically listen to Outer’s procrastination and give myself (my Inner Child) unconditional love— — location: 2919 ^ref-58547

what is self-discipline but the act of taking conscious control of your mind? — location: 2925 ^ref-15520

How might you eliminate less productive activities— — location: 2927 ^ref-29048

staying focused on your goals, making a deeper personal connection, and taking baby steps that eventually overtake your self-defeating behaviors. — location: 2930 ^ref-50320

change involves more than thought, it involves behavior. — location: 2941 ^ref-48431

behavior involves first moving your mental muscles, then writing muscles, then your whole physical self forward. — location: 2941 ^ref-60834

Keep holding your Future Vision in your mind. — location: 2944 ^ref-55544

When you take a baby step, take it as your volitional self—your higher Self. — location: 2954 ^ref-13436

Your mammalian emotional brain “remembers” the anxiety of waiting, as well as the relief you felt when the phone rang. Fear conditioning has begun. — location: 3002 ^ref-54908

more likely to form traumatic bonds. This could happen whether the person you’re interested in is actually rejecting you or whether you are being hypersensitive due to your own abandonment history. — location: 3017 ^ref-14103

When someone causes you to feel emotional pain (fear, anxiety, hurt), it triggers the release of these potent chemicals, which make the attachment more physically addictive and therefore harder to break. — location: 3028 ^ref-51133

pain and fear tend to make us more susceptible to falling under someone’s power and control. — location: 3055 ^ref-28087

Fear and insecurity can cause you to emotionally surrender to that person due to the powerful opiate-induced bond that is created. You lose volition. — location: 3055 ^ref-4533

Occasional acts of kindness or bouts of sobriety elicit intense feelings of relief and create a strong pull toward the other person, which we mistakenly interpret as love. — location: 3069 ^ref-32213

you’ve been hurt enough times for your emotional brain to associate love with insecurity. — location: 3082 ^ref-34675

you’ve been conditioned to think that unless you’re feeling insecure, you’re not in love. — location: 3083 ^ref-48957

you might pine over someone — location: 3094 ^ref-6750

who broke your heart. — location: 3094 ^ref-50393

now I can’t find anyone who makes me feel like I did with him. — location: 3101 ^ref-13940

Insecurity (anxiety) triggers adrenaline surges combined with other stress hormones and opioids that create that special biochemical kick of infatuation. — location: 3103 ^ref-56597

less-than-ideal intimacy patterns. — location: 3113 ^ref-30213

there isn’t any chemistry,” — location: 3114 ^ref-40329

examine your values as they relate to your choices in partners, which means reexamining deeply held beliefs, questioning their merit, actively refuting their assumptions, and substituting more realistic ones. — location: 3123 ^ref-14005

those who engender mutual trust. — location: 3125 ^ref-44109

As you revamp your values and beliefs about love, you gain emotional — location: 3127 ^ref-10082

sobriety. — location: 3127 ^ref-3490

you become too sure of your partner — location: 3149 ^ref-16710

someone you wouldn’t have chosen to be with if you had been forewarned. — location: 3153 ^ref-53454

I can’t help feeling a lack of passion toward my wife,” — location: 3161 ^ref-31998

Better communication, better understanding, being kinder to each other— — location: 3166 ^ref-28026

He felt most alive at work, and thrived on the challenge of attracting these women’s attentions. — location: 3170 ^ref-58409

He engaged women in flirtatious ways, never crossing the line into the realm of infidelity, — location: 3171 ^ref-37579

which is its own kind of cheating. — location: 3173 ^ref-56395

under the protection of confidentiality rules, Brad told me he felt torn. — location: 3178 ^ref-40986

he’d built an image of himself as weak, damaged goods, emotionally unstable, unworthy, unlovable. — location: 3184 ^ref-16956

Instead he focused on women over whom he was sure he had the “edge.” — location: 3190 ^ref-36005

He deemed himself a better catch than she because though she was beautiful inside and out, he, being a financially successful man, felt he had more romantic options open to him than she did. — location: 3192 ^ref-32423

It was only through therapy that he could see that he’d chosen Dottie because she hadn’t triggered his abandonment fears or any of his latent feelings about being weak or worthless, which he’d harbored as a result of his traumatic earlier breakup. Dottie made him feel valuable and special. — location: 3194 ^ref-42338

his passion was entirely contingent upon being in pursuit-mode. — location: 3200 ^ref-59651

People become love-challenged because they have difficulty feeling love toward a willing, available partner. — location: 3205 ^ref-27770

he avoided relationships with women he perceived as equals to avoid the risk of having them fall out of love with him. — location: 3207 ^ref-33368

pursuit was linked to passion and that underneath lurked fear. — location: 3210 ^ref-54362

A lot of people don’t consider taking care of themselves an important part of maintaining a relationship. If they “let themselves go” (through various Outer Child indulgences), their partners can feel devastating loss and even abandonment, which can drastically reduce the passion quotient in the relationship. — location: 3219 ^ref-60316

hypothetically speaking, if Dottie were to meet someone else and make ready to leave him, the dynamics of the relationship would probably reverse. Dottie would almost certainly seem desirable again. — location: 3224 ^ref-37589

his problem was causing her problem. — location: 3231 ^ref-13429

unconscious power struggle between Brad’s Outer Child and his Adult Self — location: 3231 ^ref-21775

I knew that if he could envision happily growing old with Dottie, his higher self could grow powerful enough to get the job done. It — location: 3237 ^ref-10822

you need a stronger, wiser Adult Self who can take command. — location: 3243 ^ref-43375

Where there is a deeply entrenched pattern of self-sabotage, there is an Outer Child who is too strong, an Inner Child who is too needy and neglected, and an Adult Self who is too weak. — location: 3251 ^ref-61582

The first step was to explore what was going on in his Inner Child, — location: 3255 ^ref-61281

Brad was able to describe his core emotions: — location: 3257 ^ref-30241

Lillian was a substitute for something Brad had been searching for since childhood. — location: 3261 ^ref-28905

The key to overcoming your deeply entrenched patterns is to gain access to your innermost emotions (hosted by your Inner Child). — location: 3264 ^ref-14807

wanted what the cake was standing in for: pleasure, love, security. — location: 3269 ^ref-884

He needed to feel loved and secure and sexual and peaceful and cherished and warm— — location: 3271 ^ref-60771

Inner is not attached to form. That’s Outer Child. — location: 3273 ^ref-8159

Outer forms a layer of calluses around Little’s feelings, enclosing Little in an emotional incubation chamber. You have to remove the Outer Child crust to release Inner’s pure emotional essence. — location: 3277 ^ref-4309

he pursued other women to avoid feeling a core feeling of “not being good enough.” — location: 3283 ^ref-18487

repetition compulsion designed to scratch the itch of a constant need to prove himself. — location: 3284 ^ref-38308

Brad, you’ve undoubtedly noticed, had an unseparated Outer Child that thrived on his lack of consciousness. — location: 3289 ^ref-13442

what Brad’s higher Adult Self believed was best for him— — location: 3290 ^ref-53473

substitute ego gratification — location: 3290 ^ref-26438

the question is whether we want to put that part of ourselves in charge. — location: 3291 ^ref-37036

something less ego-driven— — location: 3292 ^ref-41398

pro healthy choice. — location: 3297 ^ref-63520

Radical Listening separates layer by crusty layer of Outer Child from the rest of your psyche; — location: 3302 ^ref-30029

Outer clamps down — location: 3308 ^ref-27821

when it senses you’re trying to take its candy away. — location: 3308 ^ref-42983

Lillian’s faults would bother me if I lose interest in her. — location: 3331 ^ref-29783

I originally chose Dottie. And that she loves me as I am. That I respect her. But I don’t feel any chemistry with her. — location: 3338 ^ref-3733

Married — location: 3340 ^ref-47078

Why did you get married though

You can if you emotionally reinvest in your marriage. — location: 3349 ^ref-26120

flirtation’s emotional drain, — location: 3356 ^ref-43768

fully engage himself in acts of love toward his family. — location: 3356 ^ref-42817

course of daily action steps. — location: 3362 ^ref-32734

it was especially important to put the needs of his Inner Child first. — location: 3370 ^ref-60645

When you change your life one action at a time, you must do so with conscious intention of meeting your deepest emotional needs. — location: 3370 ^ref-47717

To target your vision, you must take actions on your own behalf or risk losing touch with your emotional center— — location: 3372 ^ref-48569

consciously and deliberately find the joy in it. — location: 3375 ^ref-491

keeps the task-focused nature of the activity from feeling like work and channels the pleasure-seeking part of your psyche into a constructive, consciously chosen outlet. — location: 3375 ^ref-27130

What do you want in your wildest dreams? — location: 3379 ^ref-38633

consistent in his answer, — location: 3379 ^ref-6794

touch base with his innermost emotional core to fuel his progress. — location: 3380 ^ref-63964

Sometimes Outer would answer for him, — location: 3381 ^ref-28703

the action need not directly alleviate the problem, it just needed to be carried out with full consciousness and the intention to work toward his ultimate vision. — location: 3385 ^ref-46705

practicing giving love to her—love as an action, — location: 3395 ^ref-33900

Not for Dottie’s benefit but for his own. — location: 3400 ^ref-28340

First he conjured up his Future Vision and then tuned in to his innermost feelings, while beholding his conscious intention — location: 3408 ^ref-32328

kind of physical exercise for the soul. — location: 3423 ^ref-19831

Losing touch with his emotional core would make it easy for his stealthy Outer Child to insinuate itself back into his Adult thinking and instigate a new self-defeating cycle. — location: 3437 ^ref-29446

committed to leading his life with the kind of love that comes from emotional wisdom and Adult vision. — location: 3439 ^ref-50622

weekly journal dedicated to strengthening his higher thinking self. — location: 3440 ^ref-32654

worth focusing your love energy on a worthy person. — location: 3447 ^ref-2404

special moments of fun, — location: 3472 ^ref-16790

Build a legacy that belongs not to the two of you as individuals, but to the relationship. — location: 3473 ^ref-49901

sharing openly builds intimacy and relieves the pressure to perform. — location: 3489 ^ref-63733

calm, comfortable feelings of emotional nurturance, consider that this is what mutual love might feel like, — location: 3496 ^ref-35295

primary source of conflict within relationships — location: 3510 ^ref-50822

she resorted to groveling for his attention at times and became the “push” in the push-pull dynamics. — location: 3513 ^ref-40622

commissions like impulse buying; and omissions like procrastinating about finding a better job or saving for retirement. — location: 3848 ^ref-4507

The way we deal with fear absolutely affects our relationship with money. Fear can make us feel defeated too easily, overwhelm our creative thinking, and cause us to overlook financial opportunities other people snatch — location: 3899 ^ref-34702

to feel secure enough to enjoy life with my family, — location: 3912 ^ref-45750

notoriously impressed with confidence—not just their own, but other people’s. — location: 3947 ^ref-37604

form over substance. — location: 3948 ^ref-56237

confidence with little or nothing to back it up. — location: 3948 ^ref-1445

Little You feels bad when it doesn’t have what other people have, — location: 3966 ^ref-61824

Outer Child culture, in responding to encroaching world threats, has affected all of us on a personal level. — location: 4001 ^ref-1721

I encourage you to write down financial goals and post them around your home and workplace — location: 4030 ^ref-58276

147 — location: 4942 ^ref-13212

219 — location: 5041 ^ref-12956