Taming Your Outer Child. Susan Anderson
twos—when you were a little tyrant, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain at all costs. As you grew, so did your Outer Child, eventually developing into a kind of crusader and defender. The Outer Child is a hedonist (that pleasure-seeking part doesn’t change!) as well as protector of your Inner Child, attempting to shield you from fear and hurt. Indeed, Outer is the embodiment of all your defense mechanisms—including those that can later sabotage your efforts to live a better life.
REVISING THE THREE-COMPONENT PERSONALITY
Psychology and self-help books have addressed “self-sabotage” in the past, but their authors tended to make these behaviors a function of the Inner Child. Following Freud’s example, they didn’t make a point to distinguish between “inner” and “outer” processes. In not creating a model that delineated reactive behavior as an outward manifestation of an inward emotional process, they unwittingly allowed feelings and behavior to remain merged.
In Freud’s Id, feelings and reactive behaviors are merged. The Id represents emotional drives along with their behavioral discharges. Rather than divide these stimulus-response processes in two, Freud divided the Adult in two—Ego and Superego—thus completing his personality triangle. His superego represented an internalized parent figure (sometimes overpunitive) whose role was to manage and limit the primitive emotional drives of the Id. Freud’s Ego represented the executive in charge who mediated between the overzealous, guilt-inflicting Superego and the legitimate needs of the self.
Many people are familiar with the Parent/Child/Adult framework from Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis. This framework follows Freud’s same three personality divisions. Berne’s Parent, like Freud’s Superego, manages (and overmanages) the Child’s needs and impulses. Berne’s Child, like Freud’s Id, needs to be compassionately managed and nurtured. And Berne’s Adult, like Freud’s Ego, guides the individual rather than impugns or chastises the Child self.
From Freud onward, conceptual models have differentiated two adult components while leaving feelings and behavior merged. The Outer Child framework is also a triangle, but instead of dividing the Ego in two, it divides the Id (or Child) in two. Inner Child represents the Id’s emotional drives and Outer Child represents its motoric discharges (behaviors in reaction to those emotions).
Like the other models, the Outer Child framework posits the Adult at the top of a triangle. The only difference is that our Adult Self integrates Freud’s Ego with constructive elements of the Superego, combining the roles of mediator and nurturer. The Adult Self is the executive in charge of the personality, ever striving to get stronger to better guide your life’s mission. A stronger Adult Self, en route to becoming your higher self, no longer blames your self-defeating behavior on your feelings, no longer shames and blames your Inner Child (that would be a punitive Superego), but tames your Outer Child’s behaviors, nurtures your Inner Child’s needs, and chooses positive goal-promoting behaviors.
When my parents tried to get me to do things like my homework or clean my room, I resisted—I guess you’d say passive-aggressively—by doing the absolute minimum. My Outer Child still relies on this strategy; I still perform at a minimum.
Outer Child is the “yes but” of my personality.
The Inner Child within you remains a helpless, innocent child of about five—an embodiment of your most vulnerable feelings, completely dependent on the other parts of your personality. In contrast, Outer continued gaining strength over a longer period of time and got stuck somewhere between the rambunctious age of 10 and the restless, hormone-driven age of 13. In terms of the way your Outer Child acts out, it is a lot like you were at that age—old enough to have a willful mind of your own but not yet old enough to understand the consequences, let alone the rights and feelings of others. That is why self-centeredness is age-appropriate for Outer Child. Outer isn’t cognitively developed enough to make well-considered decisions, so it acts out instead.
When responding to your Inner Child’s need for pleasure, for instance, Outer might choose to binge on candy in spite of the fact that you, the Adult, are steadfastly sticking to a diet (or so you thought). Intellectually you know for certain that your desire for pleasure is better served by keeping trim—better for both your health and your self-esteem. But Outer Child, a glutton for immediate gratification, wants to satisfy these urges now and grabs for the candy.
WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE?
Your mental capacities continued developing beyond pre-adolescence of course. Somewhere in your teens an Adult Self slowly emerged. You used your expanding cognitive abilities to limit your Outer Child’s self-rebellious behavior, trying to free yourself from the bonds of crippling defense mechanisms you didn’t even know you had. But try as you might, even as a full-fledged adult, Outer Child can still get the better of you. Outer was there first, and there’s a powerful psychological inertia supporting its behaviors. And it can act out when you least expect it.
IS IT MY INNER OR MY OUTER CHILD?
In trying to control Outer’s maneuvers, it’s sometimes hard to tell Inner’s voice from Outer’s. When your Inner Child starts pining for something specific—a second helping of ice cream, a car you can’t afford, or a particular lover you know to be “commitment phobic”—be suspicious. This is not your Inner Child, but your Outer Child disguising itself in your Inner Child’s voice. Your Inner Child is not attached to specific things like a particular food, car, or lover. Its needs are more basic and substantial—to feel special, loved, and fulfilled—and doesn’t want to become fat, broke, or heartbroken getting there. Your specific cravings are nothing more than Outer Child trying to take over your life.
Imagine that you are feeling slighted by your colleagues—lately they’ve been dismissing all of your ideas. You’ve started to think about other ways to pitch them when your Outer Child suddenly swoops in and takes over, going on a hotheaded rant, telling everyone in a crowded conference room that this time they’re going to give your idea due consideration (your Inner Child was feeling hurt and angry, no doubt). You got their attention, all right, but probably not the way you intended. Did I mention that one of Outer’s favorite mottos is: Negative Attention Is Better Than No Attention at All? In fact, it’s only made things worse—you feel more isolated and misunderstood than before.
“My Outer Child has OPD—obnoxious personality disorder.”
Your Inner Child still has wants and needs, but is desperate to break away from Outer’s clumsy, destructive way of handling things. That pesky devil child has been butting into your Inner Child’s life, behaving like the typical overprotective older brother who’s “only trying to help.” Meanwhile Inner’s been waiting—most likely for decades—to be rescued. It’s time for your Adult Self to step up to the plate.
The Adult Self we’re talking about here is, of course, you, the person reading this book, and the executive in charge of fulfilling your life’s mission. I salute you for taking this opportunity to become a stronger, more capable person. I wrote this book to offer practical tools for integrating feelings and behavior—Inner and Outer Children—to help us become our higher selves.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR FEELINGS IS NOT ENOUGH
The concept of the Inner Child has made a potent psychological contribution, helping millions of people get in touch with and nurture their most difficult to reach feelings. Many who apply the concept, though, get stuck when it comes to changing their behavior. They gain awareness, but still seek clear-cut ways to use it.
Let’s look at just one example. The concept of the Inner Child has helped us understand that when we overeat, we’re often “emotionally eating.” We’ve come to recognize that overfeeding ourselves is a misguided attempt to fill the empty, needy Child Within. But when hunger overtakes us again, we wonder, Now what? How do we translate this valuable awareness into action? Lacking concrete answers, we remain a nation of overeaters.
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