Strengthening Your Loving Inner Parent
Separating from your parents is an inevitable part of growing up.
This doesn’t mean our parents aren’t part of our lives, or don’t play a vital role, but it does mean that we have to learn how to provide the care and love for ourselves that our parents (hopefully) provided for ourselves when we were young. It also means providing the care and love for ourselves that we may not have received, but desperately need. This is the process of learning how to build and strengthen your loving inner parent.
Perhaps one of the most difficult things we will ever endure in life is our inevitable separation from our parents.
When babies are born, they have no concept of being an entirely different being than their mother. For 9 months while we are carried in our mothers womb, we eat what she eats, and drink what she drinks. When we are birthed into the world and the sacred umbilical cord that connects us to our life source, our mother, is cut, we experience our first separation. As time goes on, we experience bigger and wider separations. Our first day of school, leaving for summer camp, attending college, and moving out of the house. Of course, these are examples from a pretty idyllic home, but there may be experiences that you may have had that have caused rifts and separations with your mother, or with your parents that happened far too soon, unexpectedly or unfairly.
Regardless, separating from your parents is an inevitable part of growing up. This doesn’t mean our parents aren’t part of our lives, or don’t play a vital role, but it does mean that we have to learn how to provide the care and love for ourselves that our parents (hopefully) provided for ourselves when we were young. It also means providing the care and love for ourselves that we may not have received, but desperately need. This is the process of learning how to build and strengthen your loving inner parent.
Everyone has the ability to grow their loving inner parent regardless of the circumstances they grew up in, and regardless of their actual relationship with their parents. Learning to strengthen your inner parent helps you to tend to your own needs, heal your inner child, encourage yourself through difficult times, and extend compassion and unconditional love to yourself.
This process doesn’t happen overnight though, and like any skill, you must intentionally work on it in order for it to work for you.
Here’s how:
Call out your toxic inner parent
Most of us have internalized the voices of our actual parents and we treat ourselves and talk to ourselves in the same regard. Parents are complex, whole human beings, so the voices that we internalize can be a mixed bag. Sometimes, the voices might be understanding and caring, and sometimes the voices might be critical, judgemental, or neglectful. These voices create what I like to call your toxic inner parent, and you want to remove them from your psyche, because they are holding you back from truly being compassionate and loving towards yourself.
As you go through this process, it’s important for you to release yourself from the guilt you might have of acknowledging the ways in which your parents may have hurt you. Even if your parents did the best they could, they are only human, and may not have been able to meet your every need. For example, maybe your mother was really caring and supportive in all of your goals, but made comments on your body that made you feel insecure. Or, perhaps you were an artist living with parents who valued academic achievement. Even though they supported you as best they could, they may not have understood the depth of your creative desire, so you often felt neglected and judged.
(Note, if you do not feel as though you have internalized any antagonistic voices from your parents, chances are you may have internalized antagonistic voices from other adult figures in your life. It is equally important to call these out.)
As you go through and identify the harmful voices you have internalized, I want you to really flesh out how these voices sound and what actions you take because of them. Taking the previous examples, your critical inner mother might pipe up whenever you’re trying on new clothes. She might say “no! Don’t wear bright colors, those don't look good on your body. Try black instead.” So, you disallow yourself from expressing yourself through fashion and stick to what’s safe. Or, maybe you really want to try a new watercolor class, but then your judgemental inner father pipes up and says “oh come on, that’s a waste of time. You need to be working on your grad school applications, not spending your time on childish pursuits.” So, you never sign up for the watercolor class and begrudgingly study for your GRE’s.
As time goes on, if you never stop to identify these voices and recognize how they are impacting the way you think about yourself and directing the way you act, you may continue down a path that neglects your needs and the desires of your soul.
That’s why you must bring attention to them, and flesh out the voices and actions as much as possible. Who do they belong to? What tone do they carry? The more you flesh them out, the more you will be able to identify when they come up so you can return them to their owner, and replace them with the voice of your loving inner parent.
2. Call in your loving inner parent
Now that you have learned how to call out your toxic inner parent, it’s time to call in your loving inner parent. Although it may seem confusing, chances are the blueprint for your loving inner parent may also come from your actual parents. However, what makes calling in your loving inner parent most powerful, is that now you have the opportunity to enhance those voices by incorporating loving voices from other areas of your life.
In order to do this, I want you to bring to mind times in your life when you felt most comforted, encouraged, loved and understood. Take out a journal and go wild here. Write out as much as you possibly can. Perhaps you have a memory of dancing with your mother in the kitchen, your father standing up for you to a mean teacher, your sister comforting you through your first break up, your best friend cheering you on at your first dance performance. With each memory that comes to mind, write out how they made you feel in those moments. What kind of words did they use? What actions did they take that made you feel so deeply loved, understood, encouraged, comforted or celebrated?
In addition to this, I want you to identify times where you yourself have loved, comforted, celebrated or encouraged someone else. What did you say? What actions did you take? As you flesh out all of these happy memories of both receiving and giving love, allow yourself to fully feel into them with your whole body so that you can imprint them into your body and your psyche.
The combination of all of these voices can help you to strengthen your loving inner parent by helping you identify the qualities that you are looking for and need in order to feel unconditionally loved. This is the voice that you can now call on when you are going through a difficult time, need encouragement, or need to feel cared for.
3. Integrate your loving parent into your life
One of my favorite ways to integrate my loving inner parent into my life is through journaling. When I am experiencing a difficult time in life, or just facing a challenging emotion, I like to bring out my journal and dialogue directly with my loving inner parent.
For example, I might write something like:
“I am feeling really scared and uncertain right now because I just lost my job. I feel like a total loser.”
Then, I will respond with the voice of my loving inner parent who might say:
“I’m so sorry you lost your job, that is really difficult and it’s really understandable that you feel so scared and uncertain right now. You’re not a loser. You have been working so hard and did the best you could in a really difficult situation. I am so proud of you, and it’s okay to take time to grieve the loss of your job.”
I find that the more I journal with my loving inner parent and write down what they say on paper, the more I am able to channel their voice throughout my day when I’m not able to journal.
In addition, you can also incorporate your loving inner parent by taking care of your inner child. To do this, I like to imagine that I am actually walking side by side with my inner child, and I am tending to their every need. This is especially helpful when I am feeling anxious or upset, because it encourages me to step into a place of loving responsibility for myself. I’ll say “okay I know you’re anxious, but let’s eat something first and see how we feel afterwards.”
Learning to care for your inner child allows you to not only tend to your basic needs, but it also allows you to reconnect with your own innate innocence which can lead to developing increased levels of self-compassion and unconditional love.
Learning to strengthen your loving inner parent is a deeply healing and nourishing skill that can help you to fill the gaps of separation you have experienced with your own parents. It can help you extend more compassion, love and encouragement to yourself through thick and thin and gives you permission to care for yourself in ways that you need, but may not have received elsewhere.
Now, I’d love to hear from you! What does the voice of your inner parent sound like? Who inspires your loving inner parent? Let me know in the comments below!