Is the Inner Parent the Missing Piece in Your Personal Growth?

Discovering the Overlooked Key to Emotional Maturity and Inner Balance

Everyone in the self-development world talks about the Inner Child, but the Inner Parent is greatly overlooked. When you think about it logically, this doesn’t make sense. A child and a parent are two different and separate human beings. However, on a functional level, those two words represent two parts of one whole. When we think of “child,” we picture a parent or caregiver. When we think of “parent,” we see a specific function that necessitates the existence of a child. Essentially, being a child requires the presence of a parent, and being a parent assumes the presence of a child. An adult can’t be called a parent if they don’t have a child, and vice versa; a child without a parent is an orphan—functionally incomplete in the world.

UNDERDEVELOPED INNER PARENT

So why do we focus only on the Inner Child and overlook the Inner Parent? First, no one talks about the other side of the equation—the Inner Parent. Secondly, we need a healthy Inner Parent structure to recognize it, but this structure is usually underdeveloped in most people. So, we focus on the Inner Child, assuming it has a problem or needs rescuing, without realizing that the Inner Child is pure Power, free from flaws. When we see the Inner Child as a wounded victim, we fail to recognize that this is a distorted projection from the Inner Parent. The Inner Parent is often so unconscious that it can’t recognize who the Inner Child really is or see its full potential.

WHAT IS THE INNER PARENT?

When we come into this world, we are pure Power—wild and unbound. We bring the full potential of who we are meant to become. So, we are this Power and potential, but we don’t know it yet. We can experience life, but we can’t recognize ourselves. In order to understand ourselves, we need to develop the parts of the brain responsible for self-observation. These develop over the first 20 years of life, and I call this the Inner Parent. The pure Power within us is the Inner Child, which feels and experiences emotions. The observing part is the Inner Parent, which thinks and understands. The tricky thing about the Inner Parent is that it isn’t built through direct contact with the Inner Child but from external feedback about the child from caregivers. And this is where all the problems begin.

FALSE MIRROR

Imagine you were born with an artistic talent and wanted to play music. That’s your true potential, but as a child, you rely on adults to see and recognize it. However, if your parents believe you’d be better off becoming an architect, they reflect a different image back to you. You feel like playing music, but they reflect an image of you drawing blueprints. Your Inner Parent develops based on this external feedback. In other words, you don’t know yourself yet, so you look in the mirror of others to see who you are. But that mirror is unclear, showing someone else’s preferences instead of your true self. You FEEL like playing a piano and singing, but you look in the mirror of your caregivers and SEE an image of a person sitting by the computer and drawing images of buildings.

INNER “HALLUCINATION”

At first, your caregivers play the role of your external Inner Parent. They are the mirror through which you see yourself. If the mirror is clean and reflects your true potential, you receive precise information about who you are. Your Inner Parent will then hold this information and reflect YOU back to yourself. But if they don’t see who you truly are, you end up rejecting yourself. The Inner Parent’s job is to embrace the Inner Child, accept it, and recognize how it needs to manifest itself in life. Now imagine your Inner Parent has a preprogrammed image of you becoming an architect. It looks at your Inner Child but doesn’t see your love for music—only math and physics. It “hallucinates” instead of seeing who you truly are.

Later in life, you may try to pursue your passion for music, but you now “hallucinate” blocking beliefs, such as:

• I’m not good enough.
• Others will reject me.
• I am afraid of being judged by others.
• I cannot please others.
• What I am doing is stupid.
• My needs are not important.
• I’m not important to anyone.

YOUR INNER CHILD IS PERFECT

Take a moment to reflect on your Inner Parent. What does it think about your Inner Child? Now imagine that your Inner Child has always been, and always will be, perfect. It has no flaws, no traumas, no injuries—it is not a victim in need of rescuing. It is pure Power, and its only issue is the lack of a healthy Inner Parent. If you think your Inner Child needs saving, understand that this is false INFORMATION about you, not YOU. You don’t need to change. You have always been perfect as you are. Your Inner Parent can’t see this clearly because it reflects someone else’s preferences. Once you turn your Inner Parent inward and truly see your Inner Child—perhaps for the first time—you may cry tears of joy.

YOU ARE PERFECT. YOU DON’T NEED TO CHANGE ANYTHING ABOUT YOURSELF. JUST CHANGE THE IMPRINTS YOUR INNER PARENT HOLDS ABOUT THE INNER CHILD.

If you are interested in deepening your understanding of your Inner Parent and its relationship with your Inner Child, I invite you to read my book, “You Are the Dream of the Universe.” In it, you will uncover a whole new understanding of who your true self is.

I invite you to learn more about the relationship with your Inner Parent in my book You Are the Dream of the Universe.

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• Contact Katarzyna “Kasia” Dodd.
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