truth seeker said:
I had one very recently with what I believe is someone else's inner child. They were very upset and crying. Later on that day, it occurred to me that What I was seeing wasn't the person themselves but rather their own inner child crying from fear of rejection. This made me really understand (meaning that I really felt it) how we can find ourselves taken off guard by feelings we think we are experiencing in the present when in reality, the feelings are coming from old wounds.
This also made me take a closer look at my own reactions to situations and really question where they are coming from. Who is really crying? Who is really angry? In my opinion, when we are experiencing emotions that are really strong, that are out of proportion to the current situation or don't fit with the situation (we are really angry at someone we don't know at all or well), this can be a clue that it's really the inner child who's reacting.
As I'm actually doing the work on my personal programs, I've started reading this book called
Illusions from Ingeborg Bosch Bonomo. I've only read like 70 pages so far, but managed to make a short synthesis of the theory which is developed in order to get things clear. It seems like an alternative of the overall Healing the Inner child theory, but I found some really interresting ideas in there. So I hope I'm not too off topic.
The theory's called Past Reality Integration and here it is :
(sorry had to do a french to English translation which i very much dislike, used google translate for faster results and then edited it a bit)
Preview of the PRI
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The unified consciousness
Early in its development, the child has a unified consciousness that receives all sensory-motor stimuli and works in giving them an appropriate response. There is thus a continuous stimulus/response-consciousness.
(note : to begin, imagine your consciousness as a circle)
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Events posing a threat to the survival of the child consciousness
Because the child's consciousness does not perceive the world like an adult (for instance, the perception of "time", or the external consideration concept) there will eventually be an event occurring that will potentially represent a mortal danger such as :
- Events that could lead directly to death (examples: food deprivation or abuse)
- Any event not constituting a direct threat to life itself, but being perceived as such by the consciousness of the child.
These events often occur early in life and will be perceived as dangers so they will penetrate the consciousness, which will then be "de-unified" or "divided."
(note: now, picture your circle with two distinctive zones)
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The divided consciousness
To survive, consciousness is divided, forcing both pain and the event that caused it to fall deep down into the unconscious sphere.
For the child can not bear the idea that parents are powerless to meet his needs because he his unable to flee, to seek his welfare elsewhere or to fill his needs through his own means.
A child has a different notion of time: he does not realize that the situation in which he finds himself in will not last forever. For him, a danger may mean an everlasting one.
This splitting of consciousness occurs early in childhood ,when the child is still vulnerable and exposed to an event that will bring him the production of stress hormones, invading and threatening the development of his brain.
Thus, the divided consciousness represses the truth(s) which pose a threat to survival, acting as if it/they did not even exist. Consciousness then stores this truth and pain that result in one part (note : i.e the subconscious) , and states the events that do not pose a serious danger in the other.
(note : that would be your two parts)
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Genesis of the defense mechanisms
To conceal the truth repressed that endangers the survival, a defensive wall is then erected.
Along with the vital need to hide the truth emerges the first defense mechanism that reinforces this need: the denial.(note : being "there was no such thing as trauma"). This would take place from the time the child becomes aware of himself and the of outside world (around 1 year old).
The goal is to keep the truth out of the field of consciousness.
As there are different forms of denial, there are different forms of illusions.
For children, this division of consciousness is useful because he depends on his parents to fulfill his needs (love, food, physical consideration...)
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Destructive character of the defense mechanisms
But as an adult, a division of consciousness and the establishment of defense mechanisms have a destructive effect, because there is now no need to repress and deny the truth that when we were a child , it happened that others were powerless to satisfy our needs .
[...]
that the adult is trapped in a child's conscience, and experiences present events the way he lived his trauma when he was just a child. The present moment is thus distorted. And the brain will work so that this situation may subconsciously reminding us another occurred in the past.
The author calls this a
symbol.
This action is relatively quick, for it occurs automatically without giving the neocortex time to analyze the situation rationally.
(note : this stresses the great importance of doing the Work through self-observation)
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Notions about the symbols
The symbols are the means by which the switching from the adult consciousness to the child consciousness occurs, by swinging in his defense mechanisms ( note : thus acting mechanically as a machine and living in an illusion !)
(Note : a symbol can be just a thought, a sensory stimulus (a smell, a vision, a sound...), or being in a specific background, or talking to someone specifically, etc)
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The illusion mechanism
Simply put, mechanically opting for defense mechanisms means that we believe in the illusion that we have "built". And the identification in these defense mechanisms reinforces the illusion.
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The defensive wall
The primary wall of defense is built around five mechanisms, arranged in three layers: the fear, the primary defense, the false authority, false hope and denial of needs.
If there is still too much pain lying under one defense mechanism (pain so much strong in the child's consicousness that he could literraly die from the suffering),
the subconscious adds another layer of defense and so on, untill the consciousness feels safe.
-Fear
Unlike the four other defense mechanisms, fear is mainly physiological. It causes the body a pressing need to escape the situation that triggered it. Since fear still harbors some hope.
-The primary defense
It would be the first cognitive defense developed to prevent the child from seeing the truth for what it is. The essential idea in this illusion is that "I do not get what I need because there is something faulty in me". ("I am good for nothing," "I can not do it"). Such thoughts protects from the pain caused by the reproaches of the same type the parentsmay have addressed directly or indirectly to the infant. Thoughts of this sort primarily protect against pain due to the fact that the child has often been accused (directly or not) of committing mistakes.
The repressed truth is that these people do not get the emotional support they would have needed.
To protect themselves from this painful but effective defense, the child covered with another layer of defense, which somehow act as a buffer to mitigate the pain caused by the primary defense: false power and false hope.
-The false hope
At the heart of the illusions that make false hope dangles before our eyes is the notion that "we can get what we need only if we know better, if we are more friendly, more attractive, if we do this or that, etc.."
Unfortunately, it is still an illusion to believe that today we could fill in in any manner whatsoever the void created by the fact that one traumatic time we did not obtain what we so much missed. And the adult in his child's conscience, feels this need is so acute that he his convinced it is a current need, or something he cannot not afford getting rid of.
-The false power
At the heart of the illusion that generates this defense is the notion
that we can get what we need if we get to change the others. The false power is characterized by a condescending attitude towards others, that we tend to judge and condemn.
-Denial of needs
Third layer of defense, the illusion of denial of needs is the idea that
it is not so bad not to get what we need precisely because we do not need anything and are therefore neither vulnerable or needy.
(note : this is what I've been doing all my life)
This form of defense is characterized by the absence of strong emotions and fleeing anything that might cause such emotions.
Children develop this defense last.
That is all for now, obviously the book presents a strategy to work on this inner child or child consciousness and to reverse the defense mechanisms once you've regressed in the emotions of the trauma(s)(no hypnotic state implied here). But i'm not done with the details yet. Anyway, I recommend the reading for those who are interested.
What i find really interesting is that the theory follows some of the Work guidelines which are cognitive, physical and emotional at the same time. I personally think it is a good way of dealing with our programs, diet, and so on : having a good comprehension of the mechanisms, doing self observation and EE and then 'connect the dots'.
Hope this is of any use.
Now, on with the Work! 
