one workshop attendee so cleverly put it, Outer is an environmentalist when it comes to pursuing women (or men)—it just likes to tag them and then throw them back in.
Outer can be very cunning and put its best foot forward when pursuing a new lover. It seems the picture of altruism, decency, kindness, and tolerance. It becomes seductive, funny, charming, full of life, deeply interested in the other person’s life. But once it catches its prey, it suddenly clams up, becomes cold, critical, intolerant, irritable, and sexually withholding. Outer makes us pity the person willing to love us.
Outer can’t resist the emotional candy of pursuing an emotionally challenging lover. Outer thinks unavailable people are sexy. This goes against what’s good for your Inner Child, who needs someone capable of giving love, nurturance, and commitment. But then, since when does Outer Child care about what’s good for Inner Child?
Is all about surface
Outer can’t commit because it’s always “looking to trade up.” It is plagued with bigger-is-better syndrome.
Outer is attracted to people’s form rather than substance. Outer finds status and external beauty more attractive than integrity or kindness.
Outer tries to get self-esteem by proxy—it tries to attract someone higher than you in the pecking order.
Outer identifies with Groucho Marx: It would never join any club that would have you as a member.
Thinks it’s my way or no way
Outer doesn’t obey the golden rule. Outer obeys its own Outer Child rule: Get others to treat you as you want to be treated, and treat others as you feel like treating them.
Outer is never wrong and must never be told so, or it will break something.
Outer keeps up an endless protest against any reality it doesn’t want to accept. It can stay in protest mode no matter how hard you try to let go. It sustains a tenacious protest against loss, homework, annual checkups, taxes, rejection, global warming, and death.
Outer believes laws and ethics are for everybody else. It obeys rules only to avoid getting caught.
Outer doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice intimacy in search of satisfying its own desires. In fact, it does its best to defeat the two major tasks of intimacy: Task one is to get your Inner Child to become friends with your mate’s Inner Child. Task two is to make sure you don’t take each other’s Outer Children too personally. But Outer prefers to beat up on your mate’s Inner Child and goes head-to-head with her Outer Child.
To borrow from Elizabeth Gilbert again, Outer believes what it wants to believe. It has a wishbone where it should have a backbone.
These and many other Outer Child issues will be explored in depth in the chapters to come. But let’s highlight a few of them now to look at some of the triggers that set them in motion.
OUTER WANTS EVERYTHING THE EASY WAY—IN PILL FORM, IF POSSIBLE
Your Inner Child could be feeling hopeful about the possibility of having a better life (as a result of reading this book) but also impatient, helpless, worried that it might never happen—all normal Inner Child feelings. In the Adult Self’s hands, these feelings become motivation to create positive change. But your Outer Child prefers to act out these feelings by seeking quick fixes. Outer balks at having to go step by step through any process that takes time. It tries to convince you that awareness is enough—that insight alone is magic, that it’s not necessary to have to actually do anything differently. You just have to sit and read and think and feel about yourself and you will have a breakthrough and your behavior patterns will spontaneously change for the better and your life will turn into a bowl of cherries.
Your developing Adult Self realizes that you resolve long-standing issues not by thinking or talking your way out of them, but by doing your way out. In fact, learning to tame your Outer Child is a lot like learning to swim, do yoga, or play tennis. You can read all you want about the technique but the only thing that improves your game is actually doing it. Practicing. And lo and behold, you get better at it! When your Adult Self overrules Outer’s insistence that insight gets your behavior to change spontaneously, then you’re ready to take action.
THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS
Your Inner Child is afraid people won’t like you if they can see your selfishness. Yet Inner can’t help but stay focused on its own feelings and needs; it just doesn’t want to be criticized for it. Maybe one of your parents called you selfish during your childhood and it hurt and confused you. You tried to hide your self-interests and felt guilty for having them.
Now as an adult, you see other people get away with selfish behavior—and perhaps your Inner Child is resentful and envious that it doesn’t have the guts to do the same. Your Outer Child takes these perfectly normal feelings and uses the emotional energy to point the finger at others.
The truth is that self-centeredness is not something to be ashamed of—in fact, it’s universal to the human condition. Everybody has this self-serving part, so why not you or me? After all, if you’re not looking out for your most basic emotional needs, who will? By identifying and recognizing these needs for what they are, you become enlightened.
Self-interest hails from a primal, primitive place built into the mammalian brain (the stomping grounds of your Outer Child). The function of this primitive part of the brain is to promote the biological and emotional needs of the self. Your Adult Self’s role is to identify the self-driven part without causing shame. No one’s indicting you, the whole person, for having these perfectly normal needs. But by identifying this part of yourself, you will no longer be unconsciously motivated by it. You can now make conscious choices based on self-acknowledgment rather than self-denial. Owning up to the primitive Outer Child trait of selfishness rather than denying it, masking it, rationalizing it, or projecting it onto others offers a real boon to your personal growth.
As Joe, a former workshop attendee, puts it this way:
Outer Child was like a jolt of self-awareness. I’d always prided myself on NOT being selfish. But learning that we all have a self-centered part and that we all have an Outer Child was freeing. Now instead of accusing everyone else of selfish motives, I am more prone to catch myself in the act. It allows me to take a step back, maybe laugh about it, make amends if it’s appropriate, grow a little more self-aware, and move on. It’s helping me evolve to a higher place. I’m a work in progress.
COMING CLEAN
What might your Inner Child be feeling when your Outer Child makes a mess of things? How about nervous about how you’re going to make ends meet now that you’ve left your job and your Outer Child has stalled about finding a new one? Or how your boss will respond to the proposal that is now a month overdue?
Or maybe you’re just craving pleasure; your day wasn’t rewarding enough. So right in the middle of a project, Outer Child goes off to rest, eat, or call a friend instead of letting you finish what you’re doing. Or it might go deeper. Your Inner Child may have an undercurrent of anxiety or depression stemming from old wounds. Your Outer Child is reacting by forestalling real work with self-soothing quick fixes.
