Today’s topic for the weekly LBC post comes from Lin. Since I had never had to deal with the concept of the outer child, I had to undertake some research to understand the term before I could attempt to write on the topic. And, I am glad that I did.
I quote from an article in the Huffington Post by psychotherapist Susan Anderson.
“You have an Inner Child that represents your emotions and primal needs.
You have an Outer Child that represents your self-defeating behaviors.
You have an Adult self that needs to get stronger so it can nurture your Inner Child and tame your Outer Child so you can reach your potential for greater life and love.”
If you read the article you will come to understand, as I did what exactly self defeating behaviour is! As I understand it, all that it means is that the outer child is the action part of the duo of feeling and translating it into action. To the best of my knowledge, I have not ever thought that anything that I did ever was self defeating possibly with the exception of having acquired a habit of smoking! Since I have quit smoking, there is little that can be called self defeating in my behaviour now unless some independent observer comes along to point out otherwise.
The entire subject however was tackled differently by one of my favourite authors Viktor Frankl.
I think that I have been able to use that gap quite effectively over my life and I continue to use it even now. As the oldies amongst us would say, I am measured in my ways!