What Is OUTER CHILD? A Way To Overcome Self Abandonment And Self Sabotage
Last Updated on May 19, 2020, by Susan Anderson, Psychotherapist
Does your Outer Child sabotage your relationships? Your long-range goals? Your diet? There are myriad ways we all abandon ourselves by letting Outer Child take control of our lives. Do you forsake your true needs and goals on a daily basis? Some of Outer Child’s self-defeating patterns are aimed at our love-lives; others at our careers, and still others at our lifestyles.
Outer Child’s self-sabotage has everything to do with self-abandonment.
Self-abandonment is what happens when you love yourself ONLY enough to give yourself immediate gratifications, but NOT ENOUGH to postpone those gratifications to give yourself what you really want. But achieving long-range goals involves long hard work, which Outer Child tries to sabotage by:
- Grabbing for the second piece of cake rather than delaying that gratification to achieve your true goal of becoming trim and fit.
- Overreacting with insecurity or rage toward your lover rather than postponing that impulse and remaining open to a healthy, adult exchange of feelings.
- Running up your credit card, numbing out in front of the TV, or procrastinating instead of taking care of business.
Rather than let Outer Child get you to the abandonment of your goals, the key is to practice tools that allow you to hold yourself in higher regard. This will help you shepherd yourself beyond your deeply entrenched patterns so you can take new strides. Learn how to take actions that are good for you in the long run, rather than indulge in Outer Child’s avoidance, procrastination, and other short-term fixes.
As a self-loving adult who is in command you:
- Remain self-possessed in your love-relationships even when things heat up inside
- Stick to your diet even when tempted
- Make that awkward phone call to open up a career opportunity even though the easy road would have been to procrastinate and justify it with excuses like fatigue, unfairness, or too much competition.
Look how many millions of people love themselves ONLY ENOUGH to give into their Outer Child impulses: Eat now, diet tomorrow; spend now, pay tomorrow; cling now, cry tomorrow. But by learning to practice unconditional self-love, you are able to tame your Outer Child and forgo your complacency at work, your sweet tooth at mealtime, and your neediness and/or temper in relationships. Instead, you build steadily toward your long-neglected goals and dreams.
How to reverse self-abandonment? Well, it doesn’t happen by osmosis or by reading about it, although your Outer Child will try to con you into holding out for the magic bullet. No, there is a program that helps you resolve your ambivalence toward yourself. Learn how to take actions that inculcate unconditional self-love. The program involves behavioral steps that function like physical therapy for the brain. You change incrementally, steadily reversing self-abandonment and reaching your goals.
Related Articles: DOES YOUR OUTER CHILD SABOTAGE YOUR LOVE LIFE? How and Why
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By Susan Anderson © 2014
Originally published at https://www.abandonment.net.