Stepping up: One Friend’s experience of self-reconciliation

‘How do I reconcile the inner critical parent and the inner light?’

I attempt a process of mutual forgiveness and reconciliation. There are two parts of me, in conflict. I could call them God and Mammon: I cannot serve both. I am one human being, with two different selves. I have sought to understand, through reading psychology, theology, mystic wisdom, and other people’s explorations of their hidden selves. I have looked at concepts such as yin and yang, conscious self and shadow, Jekyll and Hyde, ego and id, or self-concept and organismic self. I found those different parts when I worshipped.

One part is my true self or inner child. When I become that child I enter the Kingdom of Heaven. She is my inner Light, though I have an inkling of something deeper still. I was unconscious of it, then I had a sense of a vulnerable part of me, hidden, surfacing. When she emerged from me, as if being born again, I called her my true self.

The other part is the critical parent or inner critic. You may be aware of an inner critic yourself. I realised mine would never be satisfied when, every time I understood something, she berated me as stupid for not knowing that before. To her, I am worthless, except for what I can achieve, which is never enough. She demands I work harder, so that when I put my mind to something I give it my all. A friend’s inner critic has his father’s negativity. His key message is ‘You’ll never amount to anything’.

When the inner critic is in control, I become who I thought I was, the mask I present to the world, and to myself much of the time. It’s like the face Eleanor Rigby kept in a jar by the door. She is not me, so how could she come about? She began in trauma and terror of death when I was a child.

If there is ‘that of God’, or an Inner Light, in us, what else is there? The critical parent is that part of me which saw how my family reacted when I was my natural spontaneous self, and was so terrified it seemed I might die. If I might behave in the way they disapproved, the critical parent reacted in rage and terror. So I did not. I behaved in approved ways, and the critical parent became unconscious. There is no need for her to be conscious if I always behave as she requires. I call that conditioned part of me ‘the adjusted child’. She still attempts to appease my mother twenty-five years after her death. She shuts down my inner light or true self.

For a long time I thought of the adjusted child simply as me. I call it a child because I faced adulthood with a child’s coping strategies, more concerned with maintaining my inner critical parent’s equanimity than with achieving results in the real world.

I burned out. For some reason the critical parent could tolerate me numbing out with social media. I ruminated on past hurt and got high on feelings of self-righteousness.

I found the words I could not say. Someone asked ‘Are you OK?’ I wanted to answer ‘I find it hard to believe anything good about myself’ and a complex emotional mix of sadness, frustration and resentment stopped me. I paused to try and sense these feelings fully and get past them, but could not. So the frustration increased.

I phoned the Samaritans, to say what I could not say, and burst out, ‘I am terrified’. In strong feelings, I had come through to something deeper and softer than the face I normally used to meet the world. Speaking from that part, I affirmed myself: ‘I have faced the world with courage’. The woman whose name I do not know, whom I have never spoken with again, said, ‘That really shone out to me’. I saw that the part of me speaking then was the real me, the inner light. She feels soft and vulnerable, but in my weakness is my strength. She frightens the critical parent.

With a friend, I practised saying the things I could not say. Words would cross my mind, and I would be conscious of a voice at the back of my head, angry and terrified, saying ‘You can’t say that’. Then, as my friend gave me time, accepting me, I would say them.

The way through is Love, which is God. How may I reconcile the critical parent and the inner light? I do not want simply to discard or annihilate my inner critic. She is me. Her unconscious fear is mine. I fear my spontaneity, like a younger sister who always does something stupid and makes us look bad. The anger is anger against myself, for not being other than I am.

Quakers told me of their twelve-step programmes: Al-Anon, Co-dependents Anonymous, Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families (ACA), and I joined the last.

I try the twelve steps. Step one is to admit I am powerless, that my life is unmanageable. The power that can bring me to sanity is the inner light, together with the wisdom of my friends. My inner light or true self does not seem powerless. She seems to be far better at knowing what I might change, and what I could not.

The critical parent and adjusted child must admit they have no power over anything. They could not control the world or motivate me to act. Only the inner light had any power, even to get me out of bed. The critical parent survived by controlling the inner light.

The critical parent has a burden: the attempt to keep me safe by impossible means. I must stop numbing out, but am frightened of facing my feelings.

I attempt to live from the inner light more and more. I repeat a mantra, ‘I am here. This is. I am.’ Or, I pay attention to what my senses, especially touch, are perceiving. Or I pause, take a breath, and try to discern what I am feeling. As the controlling parent surrenders, the mask disappears.

I am one human being. My anger is in the controlling parent, mostly directed against myself. I am unconscious of anger with others until I express it, surprising my conscious self. By recognising that I am human, and therefore become angry when I feel threatened, I might grow to become aware of my anger before I lash out.

ACA promises we will ‘become free to make healthful decisions as actors rather than reactors’. I hope to achieve this through consciousness of the feelings I suppressed, which are the reactions of my body to my surroundings, even though in the past I have blocked my spiritual growth by imagining I know what form it will take.

I created the controlling parent in me when I feared death. It is not my fault, but it is my responsibility to let go of that attempt to control. I hope working the steps and attending meetings will help me do that. My next is the ‘fearless moral inventory’ of myself, which the critical parent would use to berate me. I know I can only take that step from the Inner Light, in Love.

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Comments

Thank you for these honest and heart-felt words, friend.

By bigbooks1963@gmail.com on 15th December 2022 - 15:35

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