came to believe in and compared yourself—sometimes favorably, sometimes not—to others. Through this haphazard trial-and-error manner, you calculated your rank in the pecking order, a process that was neither deliberate nor conscious. The net quotient of this automatic process constitutes your self-esteem (the way you feel about yourself) and your self-image (the way you think other people see you).
We all know people who seem to have come out of this process feeling terrific about themselves. They have a healthy and appropriate sense of entitlement. They’re confident, self-possessed, and hold themselves with great personal dignity and pride. Many of us wish we could be like that and fault ourselves because we can’t get there. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Consider the quality of your current relationship with yourself. Do you hold yourself in high esteem? Would you like to? Can you identify any areas that could use improvement? I’ve never met anyone who didn’t wish they had more self-esteem!
I’m oversensitive to rejection. Any hint of criticism makes me defensive and impossible to be around.
My Outer Child is self-spiteful. I punish myself when someone treats me poorly instead of standing up for myself.
I put more pressure on myself than anyone else ever could. I drive myself to overachieve. I’m a type A for sure.
A member of one of my workshops, Steve, presents this testimonial about how the program helped him develop a nurturing, loving relationship with himself:
My self-image was a disaster. My father had brutalized me as a kid. People could SMELL the shame on me somehow. But then I figured . . . if I don’t hold myself in high regard, why should they? I had no confidence in me, so why should anyone else? So I tried to cover up my shame and self-doubt by putting on this big act. I acted like I thought I was a pretty together dude (the way my father acted). I was faking it, not just with them, but with myself. I was trying to make the feelings go away.
Steve’s as-if persona meant he was not being genuine with himself or others. His sometimes jokey, sometimes overearnest manner came across as hollow.
I couldn’t be real because I was ashamed of being ashamed. It was a vicious cycle. I’d been ACTING for so long, I sometimes forgot how low my self-esteem was. But then something might happen, like me getting laid off at work, and I’d hit bottom and come face-to-face with my self-loathing once again, petrified that I would die a loser.
Steve’s Inner Child had feelings of anxiety, self-doubt, and inadequacy, but as uncomfortable as these feelings were, they were not the problem. The problem was the way he reacted to these feelings—the Outer Child defenses he had erected to avoid having to deal with them. Steve’s attempt to cover them up (remember, Outer Child loves to put on an act) interfered with his ability to be himself.
It didn’t take Steve long to grasp the root of the problem and his next question was a universal conundrum: So now I know why I do it, but how do I change it? People gain insight but don’t know how to use it. A program I call “separation therapy” provides a hands-on solution—a way to use your insight. I borrowed the term from the late Richard Robertiello, MD, a psychoanalyst, my mentor, and the co-author of Big You, Little You: Separation Therapy.
SEPARATION THERAPY: PHYSICAL THERAPY FOR THE BRAIN
The Outer Child framework accomplishes something revolutionary. In separating the parts of the personality, it gives you access to an internal dynamic that dictates how you relate to yourself (and others) and what you accomplish in life.
The separation therapy we’ll begin in this chapter gives voice to the three dynamic parts—Inner Child, Outer Child, and Adult Self. Through simple dialogues you get these parts to talk to one another and work together productively.
Think of separation therapy as physical therapy for your brain. It effectively builds your self-esteem—just as physical exercise builds cardiovascular health and muscle mass—and improves your confidence. The idea is to zero in on your deepest emotional recesses so that you can heal and resolve any underlying sources of self-doubt or inhibition.
You’ve already begun preparing for separation therapy by increasing your awareness about your Outer Child and adopting your Inner Child. The next step is separating your Outer Child from your Inner Child, freeing that Inner Child to receive your unconditional love. At last! Separation therapy provides a hands-on way to give love and esteem directly to yourself. What used to be an easier-said-than-done aphorism—love thyself—now becomes a goal within reach.
If all this talk about separating constructs from one another sounds theoretical, that’s because it is based on a theory, but fortunately one that’s easy to put into practice. In this chapter the practice will be writing simple letters and dialogues.
No one’s asking you to become a fluent writer if you are not so inclined. I’m talking about jotting down a few notes, not writing volumes. To the Outer Children out there looking for a magic bullet—kindly take a backseat. We know how good you are at avoidance. As we practice using this and the other tools, we’re going to override Outer’s passive-avoidant tendencies and engage the more action-oriented areas of your brain—in this case by putting pen to paper. The patterns of self-sabotage we are deconstructing here are so deeply entrenched that they call for hands-on measures to undo them.
If you’ve already decided to excuse yourself from actually writing anything down, stop and read that last paragraph again and ask yourself who’s in charge here. You won’t get the same benefits just reading about the exercise.
If you want to tackle your most important goals, you simply must go beyond digesting the Outer Child framework intellectually. You need to take action. Committing your thoughts and feelings to the written word engages a wider range of brain functions than just reading about them does—it changes the brain, strengthening existing neuronal pathways and triggering structural changes.
Separation therapy is more like physical therapy than it looks at first glance. When you put pen to paper, you activate neurons connecting to tendons and muscles in your arm, hand, fingers, etc. You are using a graphomotor task to bring diverse brain activities to the table at once, engaging mental functions involved in reasoning, emotional memory, imagining, practicing, and those that integrate multiple brain systems. In fact, strengthening the brain’s integrative functions—the neural networks coordinating emotion, cognition, and intentional behavior—may prove to be the most valuable aspect of all this incremental brain exercising you are doing.
As with any other type of physical therapy, you won’t instantly see improvements. It may take a few sessions before you feel something, but then one day, there it is—you feel less inhibited and more confident. With multiple sessions, over time you begin to feel and act like a new person. The more regularly you exercise your brain, the greater the positive change.
Let’s get started so you can feel the difference between understanding the concept and truly experiencing it.
NOTE TO SELF
First, dedicate a special notebook to taming your Outer Child. Now write today’s date along with your intention to improve your relationship with yourself—remember, that’s the point of all this.
Get specific about what you want and need in your life to feel better about yourself. Think of a goal you have been trying to reach but have not yet achieved. Zeroing in on this goal is central to our work here. All of your goals are to be honored. Each one becomes a friend who accompanies you throughout this book to help you build your relationship with yourself. When you focus on your goal, you center your energy and improve your aim toward the target.
Some examples from my workshops:
My goal is to become solvent. I’m three months behind in my mortgage and it makes me feel irresponsible and ashamed.
My goal is to get in shape; I’ve let myself go. If I fixed this, I’d feel more comfortable in my own skin.
My Outer Child blocks me from getting recognition, though I’m not sure how. I know my performance at