who’s in your psyche, and cleanse the concept from any debris that may have inadvertently collected on it.
Remember, Inner Child represents your feelings, not the behaviors those feelings may trigger. To get in touch with your feelings, consider how much you’d like to be rid of those self-sabotaging behaviors and how frustrated and trapped you feel right now. These feelings—desirous, frustrated, impatient—all belong to your Inner Child.
Like any small child, Inner Child is full of hopes and dreams; it wants to be loved, heard, indulged, cherished, and freed. Your Inner Child is that child on the street corner: small and helpless and incapable of providing for itself. It’s up to your newly emerging Adult Self to meet the child’s needs. When you care for yourself, it is called “self-love.” When you value yourself, it is called “self-esteem.” As I’ve said, your most important adult responsibility (the one we are all most likely to shirk) is to perform the tasks of self-love, self-esteem, self-acceptance, and self-nurturing on your Inner Child’s behalf.
For the purpose of this dialogue, let’s borrow terminology from Kirsten and Robertiello’s book, Big You, Little You. Think of your Adult Self as “Big You” and your Inner Child as “Little You.” This dialogue works to resolve the relationship between these two voices. The universal dilemma for most people is that Big You has been too weak, Outer too strong, and Little You neglected and growing ever needier. As a result of this exercise, Big You gets stronger and is able to finally validate, nurture, calm, and love Little You. When this happens Outer no longer has the opportunity to act out your Inner Child’s stray feelings.
So consult your notebook and revisit your goals. Write them down again and add today’s date. As you write your goals, remember to honor each one no matter how big or small, no matter how outlandish someone other than you might think it is. Your goals give your life aim, trajectory, and vision.
Now zero in on one particular goal and think about how you feel about not (yet) achieving it—and attribute the feelings to your Inner Child. Bob explained how he got started:
My goal was to increase my income but I was afraid to go out there. I was afraid I’d fail. So I wrote a dialogue and gave this feeling to my Inner Child—my Inner Child was afraid. I also wanted to feel better about myself. If I made more money, I wouldn’t feel so inadequate. I gave that feeling to my Inner Child too. I imagined that he was feeling a whole combination of things: hopeful, afraid, impatient, angry, frustrated, and sad.
Now get in touch with your own feelings. Might Little You feel impatient about fulfilling its dreams? Frustrated? Hopeless? Excited? On edge? Desirous? Desperate? Any feelings that come up belong to your Inner Child. Capture those feelings in your notebook, like this:
My goal is ________ and I haven’t reached it yet. My Inner Child feels the following ways about it: ________, ________, ________.
As you get these two parts of your psyche talking to each other, remember Little You is your inner self. The individual who will write the dialogue is your higher Adult Self, who creates your Inner Child’s voice, giving it a vocabulary befitting a five-year-old (or younger) child. Your higher self also creates the voice of the stronger Adult Self you are becoming. In creating a persona for Big You, you are once again using the regenerative powers of the imagination, this time to create an image of a loving parent-self fully capable of administering to your deepest emotional needs. For inspiration, you can look to people you’ve admired for qualities to emulate. Your goal is to create the kindest, most empathic, nurturing, wise Adult Self you can give voice to.
Here’s Bob’s experience:
I had a beloved aunt. She genuinely cared for all of us: children, pets, my parents. I trusted her to always be there. She was warm, kind, intelligent, and understanding. When I created an image for my Adult Self, I based a lot of it on my aunt. As I wrote the dialogue between Big Me and Little Me, I channeled my aunt and started to BECOME her.
Creating the image of a higher-functioning Adult Self—and staying in character for the duration of the dialogue—stimulates your mirror neurons and provides high-level physical therapy for the brain. By first creating and then writing from this character’s perspective, you give your mind a powerful picture of you to digest. Doing this exercise is part of the process of becoming the adult you always wanted to be!
YOUR TURN
Here are a couple of examples to help inspire you to get started. A member of a workshop offered the excerpt below of one of his first dialogues. His goal was to get in shape. Getting started was awkward, he admitted, but he found a way.
BIG FRANZ: How do you feel about getting fit, Little?
LITTLE FRANZ: Scared.
BIG: Why?
LITTLE: Because you won’t do it.
BIG: Why do you think so, Little?
LITTLE: Because you don’t do anything to help me. I feel so bad about myself. And you don’t care.
BIG: But I’m changing that, Little. I want you to feel better.
LITTLE: I don’t feel good like other people. They go to the gym, but you don’t take me. You just let me look like a blob and feel worthless and bad.
BIG: I’ve let you down in the past, Little, but I’m going to change that. I want you to feel good about yourself.
LITTLE: Yeah, but you won’t bother. You’ll just do the same stupid stuff all over again.
BIG: Little, I’m going to care more. I’m going to make things better.
LITTLE: I’m just not important enough for you to take me to the gym. Other people are important enough to take care of themselves, but I’m not. You just stay home and watch TV instead of doing anything to make me healthy and strong.
BIG: I will from now on, Little, because I’m finally listening to you and I won’t let you down again.
LITTLE: I don’t trust you. I’ll feel even more mad and upset because you won’t bother to do what you say.
BIG: Yes I will . . .
Franz told us he didn’t expect to be confronted by his Inner Child, didn’t know he had such a resentful, hurt little kid inside. It both moved and motivated him. He reported later that he had to hear about his Inner Child’s feelings more than once before he started to change his habits, because he felt a strong pull to go back to his old ways, but dialoguing set him on the road to developing new, more constructive habits.
One more example and then it’s your turn. A woman from the same workshop offered a sample of her first dialogue, which focuses on her career development. Like a lot of people in my workshops, she began by asking her Inner Child how she was feeling.
BIG CARLA: How do you feel about the job, Little? I was thinking about moving on, maybe starting my own business.
LITTLE CARLA: I want to be somebody. I feel like a nobody.
BIG CARLA: I’m glad you’re telling me, Little. You are somebody. I want you to feel better about
