Now I have failed in my life so many times that I even stopped counting. Slavic mentality is filled with negative strokes, directed at “we love you when you are down, but when you up and rising you scare us, what if you will get out of control, get punished for that and then will have to save you again?”. I kid you not I think I have heard something similar from my parents couple of times.
Now through my own personal therapy, working as a therapist and teaching how to give a healthy support to others I have managed to change this in me, and to become supportive myself. The inner adaptive child, as an ego state is filled with different “negative” emotions and feelings- jelosy, anger, resentment. None of them are actually negative or positive on their own, and they can be used both ways, in a reactive form- acting out upon them, or in a constructive mode- is there something positive in this? Can I use it in a healthy way?
As a self support and monitoring system, I have developed a reward system, lol with stickers like in a primary school. Majority of my clients took it with suspicion at first, and now enjoy it a lot. Works like magic- each time you get angry or jealous but you don’t act out upon this feeling- stick a sticker in your journal. The inner children who have never had this before are enjoying this more then ever.
Now the new experience that I have developed isn’t exactly based on the reward system, in order to avoid seeking failure for future rewards. It’s more about celebrating the closure of analysis. It can be tough sometimes to sit down and truly talk to yourself, to recognize where you have made a mistake, what can you do in the future to accomplish a different result, what can you learn from this situation. Journaling is one of the best options so far. The celebration starts when you are done with inner work, so it’s the inner work that’s being celebrated not the actual failure. And that is one hell of a challenge- because the inner critic has a lot to say at first. You can reduce the volume of that criticism flow by meditating and imagining a perfect scenario, of how things should have been, instead of how they actually went. Make a contract with yourself that you will only do it once, you will be satisfied with the result, and you wont come back or compare future events with that experience. Stay true to yourself and respect your own promises. Then find something you have been shoving away to the darkest corner of your mind, something you’ve wanted desperately but found it completely ridiculous, even childish. And then do it. Book a trip, a class, hell go out and play sports, move and follow the flow. I have noticed that for some people buying things wont work so search for an activity rather then a material things. The positive emotions are the best for curing adaptive inner kids. Help that inner kid by giving them all the love that they deserve. May be you never had this when you were growing up but its never too late to have a happy childhood. Anchor these feelings and use them each time you are worried that you wont make it, you won’t achieve something, be your own support.
If you’ll use any of the above and will want to share your experience, comment down below, always appreciate your input!
Thank you and have an amazing day guys.