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Exchanged Glory V: God Meant it for Good

Chapter Three. Internal Parent

…when our internal Parent fails to reflect our Father in heaven, our heart becomes its own personal dysfunctional family.

Parent-Adult-Child

When I had my conflict with my parents concerning smoking, I was in an important stage of my development. For my entire life, I had treated my parents’ word as truth and their example as reality. Now, however, I had begun to take input from the world around me to form my own opinions. The care for my life was transferring from my parents to me, and an independent conscience was taking shape within me. I was starting to decide for myself how people should act.

Borrowing terminology from a field of psychology called Transactional Analysis, I was starting to develop an internal Parent (with a capital P). I don’t use this term in exactly the same way Transactional Analysis does, which refers to it as an “ego state …an entire system of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from which we interact with others.”^[9] I simply use it as a convenient way to group together the emotions within us that tend to function as a parent would.

Previously my external parents had taken care of me and told me how to treat others. They were there for me when I lacked the wisdom to guide my own life. Now I was taking everything I had learned from them and others and was reshaping it into an internal Parent that was gradually taking over their job.

I should also briefly mention the two other parts of our personality identified by Transactional Analysis: an internal Child (with a capital C) and an internal Adult (with a capital A). (Once again, I am only using these terms to group certain parts of our personality together to make them easier to understand. I am not talking about separate “ego states” within us.)

Our Child is a set of emotions that is capable of experiencing life much as a child would. We have feelings that inspire us to laugh, have fun, and live life from our hearts. We desire unconditional love, attention, and appreciation from others. We get angry when we don’t get our way and become jealous of those who get more than we do.^[10] We can be both childlike (a healthy expression of Child emotions) and childish (an unhealthy expression of Child emotions).

Our Adult is made up of our reason and our will. It is the part of us that is capable of stepping back from emotions in order to make decisions based on facts. Our Adult gives us the clear-headedness we need to follow reality even when it contradicts our feelings.

The second book of this series, Exchanged Glory II: The OK Stronghold, addressed this third part of our personality in a good deal of detail.^[11] It talked about the importance of receiving God’s word and making wise decisions to steer our life according to truth. In Exchanged Glory V: God Meant it for Good, I will focus on our Parent. While wise decisions are important, they won’t be enough unless they are combined with a healthy emotional care for ourselves and others.

Confused Parent

An internal Parent has the following parts:

1. Guilt and reward emotions (our conscience)

2. Nurturing and protecting emotions

3. Judgmental emotions^[12]

When all goes well, guilt and reward emotions are based on God’s truth, nurturing and protecting emotions on His love, and judgmental emotions on His wrath and mercy. A healthy internal Parent doesn’t fall into either perfectionism or permissiveness. It walks the fine line of tough love with gentleness.

Unfortunately, many of us have an internal Parent that has taken on any of a number of unhealthy forms. For example, our Parent may resemble an angry parent who beats us up over mistakes. Or it may resemble an over-indulgent parent who gives us permission to destroy our lives in the name of nonjudgmental love. It can also be paralyzed or absent, like a parent who feels incapable of providing guidance or making firm decisions.

In my case, the normal growth of my Parent was interrupted by the conflict with my father and mother over smoking. Everything had been going well. I was learning to appreciate the value of hard work; I was gaining a feel for both tough love and gentleness; I was even learning to stand up for what I thought was right. But when I tried to do that with regard to smoking, my father and mother (together with the many other adults in my life who smoked) threw me into confusion. They justified a habit that seemed to be obviously wrong.

It wasn’t long before I stopped trusting them and pulled away emotionally. In the confusion that resulted from that choice (which I will describe below), my inner life gradually took on a form that is symbolized by Figure 7.

Some parts of Figure 7 are the same as Figure 5 on page 27. I continued to try to do what was right (symbolized by the arrows to the Obedient Behavior and Attitudes box). A major difference, however, is that this no longer relieved me of my Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow (symbolized by the highlighted portion of the chart). These emotions remained unresolved within me, churning and struggling to find a place of peace.

I felt vulnerable to my parents’ mistakes, which inspired Fear in my heart. They didn’t care enough about themselves to take care of their own health, so what did that say about their ability to lead me?

My Perception of Danger was reinforced by the carcinogenic fumes in our house. I couldn’t get away from the sights and smells that convinced me that something was wrong. I concluded that I couldn’t rely on anyone to take care of me but myself.

My emotions were intensified by my father’s workaholic lifestyle. He was rarely available, and I needed him now more than ever. I was facing an inner battle that I didn’t understand, and his absence, for the first time, triggered a sense of abandonment and anxiety that periodically afflicted me for decades. I often felt like my life was a crazy battle against mysterious forces that made no sense to me, and I was left to figure it out on my own.

My growing panic was also affected by the feeling that I was somehow at fault for the difficulties I was facing. In many ways, I was mistaken, but I was correct in one way: I was a sinner who was separated from God. I wasn’t consciously aware of that at the time, so I didn’t feel condemned about it, but I did suffer the consequences just the same. Without God’s input, I couldn’t make sense of my experience, and this left me uneasy about who I was and what I should be doing. My conscience sensed that something was wrong, and the resulting Guilt fed a growing insecurity.

I was also Angry at my parents, especially my father. I felt he had been criminally negligent with my mother’s life by encouraging her to continue smoking, which was confusing for me. I wanted to think the best of him, but he had committed an act that was so offensive to me that I couldn’t simply overlook it.

I wanted to fix my feelings, but I didn’t know how to. I became Frustrated and instinctively fought to regain what I had lost, but I couldn’t find a way to do that. My emotions were building pressure with no release valve. I felt a need to lash out at someone, but I didn’t want to hurt anyone. As a result, I held the growing storm inside of me. Unfortunately, this produced Long-Term Suffering that slowly led to Sorrow.

Self-Punishment

It obviously would have helped me to talk to someone, but I didn’t know that this was an option. My parents were the most likely candidates, yet after the way they handled the smoking conflict, I wasn’t eager to open up to them. I tried to put the whole mess behind me and move on. I told myself that this was just the way my life was, and I would have to learn to deal with it.

It is only as I look back that I realize how futile this choice was. It caused my emotions to morph and fester beneath the surface, and eventually this produced sinful changes in my personality and behavior (symbolized by the arrows to the Sinful Behavior and Attitudes box).

The first sinful change was that I began putting more and more pressure on myself to perform. I became a perfectionist in the hope of finding security through success. I tried to become competent enough to handle every problem that might come my way, because anything less might leave me vulnerable.

I didn’t understand that my perfectionism sprang from the smoking incident until I was almost fifty years old. As a child, I thought I was just reacting to the way life was, but I now see the obvious connection. My parents had changed my experience of the world, and I was restructuring my attitudes and actions to come to grips with the way I now perceived it. Life was unsafe; no one was going to be there to make sure I would get what I needed or wanted. In order to make up for that, my young heart decided I wasn’t allowed to make mistakes.

I, of course, failed at this impossible task. I was an impulsive ten-year old who constantly lost focus and fell short of his unrealistic demands. Still, I was persistent. I repeatedly tried and failed – each setback inspiring more fury within my heart.

Eventually, so much rage built up that it began to spill out as physical punishment against myself. When I did poorly at sports, I started punching nearby trees. It was a way of inflicting pain on myself in order to provide an outlet for my Anger. I felt that my weakness was exposing me to danger, so I hurt myself to emphatically declare that this was unacceptable.

As time went on, I progressed to jumping in the air and landing “knees-first” on the ground. I did this even on gravel driveways. I knew the ground wasn’t suffering; I wanted to hurt myself for failing to be perfect enough. (Years later, x-rays revealed that I have a bone chip in one of my knees. I suspect that this injury is a remnant from one of my angst-inspired jumps.)

Finally, I resorted to cutting my hands with razor blades. This was less painful than punching trees or landing on my knees, but the dramatic effect brought the same relief. It let me feel like I was doing what I could to find safety and relieve my distress. It expressed my alarm and fury over my vulnerability. In a strange way, the physical pain hurt less than the pain of holding my emotions inside of me.

What is amazing about my behavior is that I had no example for it. My parents had never physically harmed me. They weren’t even angry people. In addition, I had never heard of the practice that is today called “cutting.” My actions were entirely self-conceived and self-motivated, no doubt with inspiration from demonic spirits.^[13]

There is, I suppose, one connection that I can make between my actions and my parents’ example. Their justification of smoking had sent me the message that it was OK to physically harm yourself if it served some purpose. At a gut emotional level, I may have reasoned that if it was alright for my mother to slowly kill herself with cigarettes in order to remain pleasant for my father, it was alright to cut myself in an attempt to perform at the level I felt was necessary.

Our Own Personal Dysfunctional Family

I didn’t realize I was creating an inner world that was far more frightening than any realistic threat from the outside. The danger from smoking was nothing compared to the danger brought by the damage being done to my heart. I was a child trying to make sense of the insanity of addiction, and I was spinning out of control in my attempts to do so. My internal Parent warped under the pressure and became distorted for decades into the future.

Here is one of the most important messages I will present in this book: when our internal Parent fails to reflect our Father in heaven, our heart becomes its own personal dysfunctional family. The sense of nurture and guidance that should sustain us is missing, and we end up wandering into danger zones. We feel unprotected and turn from truth to sinful behaviors that make us feel better for a time but end up causing long term damage. In my case, although I had not grown up in an abusive family, my abusive internal Parent made me feel, in part, as if I had.

A dysfunctional inner life can lead to a cycle on the Sinful Behavior and Attitudes side of the Emotion Commotion Chart. Our unresolved Pain, Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow lead us to seek love in the wrong places. We turn to actions that provide some relief, but they are deceptive; they don’t bring true inner health. This eventually leads to greater Pain, Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow, which leads us to seek relief in more Sinful Behavior and Attitudes. More Pain, Fear, Guilt, Anger, and Sorrow result, and this leads to more Sinful Behavior and Attitudes …. The cycle takes us down the path into addiction.

Stopping the Symptoms

I didn’t know any of this when I was ten years old, so I expressed my inner turmoil with cutting. When my parents saw the cuts, they asked me how I had gotten them, and I told them that they were from pushing through thorns in the woods. I doubt they believed me, but they didn’t press the issue.

I continued the practice through the summer after fifth grade and stopped when I entered the sixth grade. At my sixth grade Christmas concert, I performed well as a singer and trumpet player. I came home feeling especially good about myself. My internal Parent approved of my performance, and my internal Child was euphoric.

I walked into the room where my father was watching TV and celebrated by throwing little styrofoam balls (fake snow) into the air. Unfortunately, I hadn’t noticed he was holding a bowl of popcorn. When the fake snow went into it, he became annoyed and scolded me.

I was mad at myself for ruining a great evening, so I went to my room to vent my anger by cutting my hands. I didn’t think about the fact that this would get blood on the white shirt I had worn to the concert and expose my “thorns in the woods” lie. When my parents saw the blood, they let me know that they were concerned and told me that they might have to send me to a psychiatrist.

In order to control my misguided rage (and stay away from that psychiatrist), I stopped the outward forms of my self-punishment and never returned to them.^[14] Unfortunately, the rage in my heart remained. I had stopped the symptoms, but it was only a matter of time before the disease showed up again in a different form.

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