Marriage and the Inner Child

We all have those days. The days when we seem to lose touch with our own adultness and behave like children.

It might be flying into a rage about something, or it might be bursting into tears. Or anything in between. And of course this kind of behaviour is not constructive when it happens in response to a conflict or problem within a relationship. However it is a kind of survival strategy.

It is completely understandable. For we are all capable of inner child behaviour when we are triggered. We come to our relationships with the same patterns we created as children when we felt unsafe. Those behaviours come to form a sort of survival kit, and we can all change our survival kit to make it more appropriate to adult life.

It’s useful to think of these inner child behaviours as parts. Think about the way people tend to talk about different parts. For instance someone might say “A part of me really just wants to give up on this and divorce him, but another part of me wants to do everything in my power to get the marriage to work again.”

You may be familiar with other parts, such as your Inner Critic, your Perfectionist or your People-Pleaser. These are like inner voices telling you things like “don’t upset her” or “that could do with a bit more work.” These parts look like adult voices, but they are driven by the childhood fear of judgement or abandonment.

What exactly are these parts?

To me it looks like each part is a collection of neural pathways which get triggered by specific circumstances. And those pathways developed in response to your need to protect yourself when you were small.

I like to think of them as neural pathways because I know that we have considerable neural plasticity, which simply means you can teach an old dog a new trick.

We all start with the neural pathways we create as small children.

These pathways are generally formed before the age of seven. They correspond to a time in our lives when we do not have much in the way of resources at our disposal.

The young child’s first response to fear or pain is to tend and befriend, but this doesn’t work if the parents are either abusive or emotionally unavailable. And believe me food on the table and clean clothes are not enough on their own. Children need love and attention as well!

When we’ve been abused or neglected, these early pathways wire together to form the wounded child, the collection of behaviours which look like those of a very young child.

Later, from about the age of seven, the adaptive child emerges. The neural pathways which constitute the adaptive child have access to different strategies, including fight or flight and freeze. So in adulthood, if the person’s adaptive child get triggered they may fly into a rage. This is simply the fight pathway that’s being triggered.

Which strategy we develop as children depends on our circumstances. If we grow up in a violent household where we are encouraged to use violence, then the fight pathway will be the obvious ‘choice’. But this is not actually a choice – at least not yet.

In a family where there is absolutely no safety, flight or even freeze may be the best option, and so we grow up with a strategy of withdrawing or running away when things get difficult. In adults, withdrawal can literally mean leaving the house or it can look like retreating to the shed or into depression.

In an adult relationship, however, it’s really important to engage with your Wise Adult. That’s the part of you which places boundaries on your behaviour and is more interested in deepening connection with your partner than with attacking or scoring points.

If your partner is aggressive or neglectful, and you respond from your adaptive child, you will simply get caught up in a repeating cycle, which ultimately will lead into the death spiral, and then potentially into divorce.

When you respond from your Wise Adult, you stand a chance of getting back into love and connection.

This brings me to the 3 Principles

One of the basic tenets of the 3 Principles is that our thoughts and feelings, are all created in the moment, from the inside-out. In other words they can never be ‘caused’ by people or circumstances.

This is not a big leap from the idea that a particular type of behaviour (violence, withdrawal, verbal retaliation, etc) is the product of a neural pathway that we developed as a child.

To me it looks like this:

My wounded child (a collection of neural pathways) holds the pain of abandonment and the fear of being in the wrong which I experienced as a child.

My adaptive child (another collection of neural pathways) responded to this experience by getting really good at sarcasm, and having an overwhelming need to be right which transmutes into shouty arguments, or worse.

Now that I'm an adult, when my wounded child is triggered by a feeling of being attacked or put in the wrong, my adaptive child gets sarcastic and dismissive. Or simply shouts her frustration. Of course this behaviour is not very well received by my partner.

Those behaviours are entirely created in the moment from the inside-out, in response to my perception that I have done something wrong.

What or who is your Wise Adult?

I’ve not mentioned this yet, but many of the parts models talk about a true self or core self. And so does the 3 Principles. This true self is the essence of who you are and can never be damaged.

The true self is the source of your innate well-being, wisdom, empathy, compassion and so on. All of these are part of our true nature.

And the Wise Adult? This is the ‘part’ of you which in marriage therapist, Terry Real’s words “can stop, think, observe and choose.” Your Wise Adult chooses empathy, compassion and curiosity over judgement and retaliation.

To me that looks like my true self. And the great thing about the true self is that not only is it careful of the health of our relationships and our partner’s well-being, but it is part of the divine, something so much bigger than either the wounded child or the adaptive child.

Within the 3 Principles understanding, change is often only a thought away.

1. You realise or remember that you ‘have’ a true self/wise adult – in fact that is who you are.
2. Then when those old pathways get triggered, you choose to take a step back and notice what you’ve done
3. You accept that while you regret your behaviour that was triggered, you are simply human and you can forgive yourself
4. You apologise and try again speaking from your Wise Adult instead of your adaptive child
5. And remember to get good at anything you have to practise. You’ve gotten very good at all those adaptive child behaviours. Now you have a new way of being. A bit like giving up the guitar and learning the piano (or vice versa!)

Moving from your old adaptive child survival kit to a new survival kit fashioned by your Wise Adult isn’t always easy. But it is well-worth the investment. You can make it easier by working through the Survival Kit Workbook, which will help you to understand why you created those childhood behaviour patterns and guide you through a process of creating new adult behaviours.