Taming Your Outer Child

1. Meet Your Inner Child, Outer Child, and Adult Self.

This chapter starts you on a journey of growth and discovery by exploring a new three-part concept of personality, the Outer Child framework.

Three core parts. Your personality can be understood as having three main components: the Inner Child, the Outer Child, and the Adult Self. These aren't flaws, but universal psychological constructs representing different functions within your psyche. Understanding their roles is the first step toward gaining control over self-defeating behaviors.

Inner Child feels. Your Inner Child is your emotional core, the vulnerable, innocent part that holds your feelings, needs, and wants, often stemming from early experiences. It is pure emotion and need, not behavior. It needs tending, hearing, and honoring.

Outer Child acts out. Your Outer Child is the part that acts out your Inner Child's feelings impulsively and self-defeatingly, often without Adult intervention. It's the willful, self-centered part responsible for misbehavior, seeking immediate gratification and resisting change. The Adult Self is the executive, mediating between the Inner Child's needs and the Outer Child's impulses, striving to guide your life's mission.

2. Your Outer Child Acts Out Your Deepest Fears and Self-Sabotage.

Your Outer Child manifests outwardly what your Inner Child feels inside.

Sabotage in action. The Outer Child is the source of your self-sabotaging tendencies, hindering your progress towards goals like a happier love life, financial freedom, or career success. It translates your Inner Child's vulnerable feelings, like fear of abandonment, into inappropriate behaviors such as freaking out, freezing up, or blowing up in relationships.

Master of disguise. Outer Child operates undercover, masquerading as free will while keeping you stuck in old patterns. It uses defense mechanisms like procrastination, denial, projection, and people-pleasing with ulterior motives. It seeks immediate gratification, cleverly substituting self-indulgence for genuine self-nurturance.

Universal trait. This self-centered, obstinate part is universal because we all have primal feelings that drive deeply entrenched defense mechanisms. Recognizing and naming your Outer Child is crucial for taming it and taking control of your actions and emotional destiny.

3. Brain Wiring Explains Your Automatic, Self-Defeating Patterns.

Your primal fears and your learned automatic defenses are coupled, and this coupling is what my program is designed to undo.

Amygdala's role. Your Outer Child's behaviors are linked to brain activity, particularly the amygdala, the seat of primal fears (Inner Child) and the trigger for reactive patterns (Outer Child). The amygdala prepares you to act first, think later, initiating fight, flee, or freeze responses based on perceived threats, often below conscious awareness.

Fast vs. slow circuits. The connection from the amygdala to behavioral impulse areas is faster and stronger than from higher thinking centers back to the amygdala. This explains why automatic reactions override reasoned responses. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, triggered by fear, further hinder higher brain function while strengthening emotional memory and reactive behaviors.

Fear incubates. Fear, especially abandonment fear, tends to intensify over time rather than dissipate, making subsequent challenges more daunting. Avoidance behaviors, like procrastination or isolation, allow this fear to grow, while the Outer Child builds defenses in response, creating roadblocks to moving forward.

4. Self-Abandonment is the Root of Your Inner Conflict.

While adults can feel abandoned, they can’t actually be abandoned by another person... However, adults can abandon themselves.

Leaving yourself behind. Unlike dependent children, adults can meet their own basic needs. When adults feel abandoned by others, the deeper issue is often self-abandonment – unconsciously neglecting their own emotional needs and self-worth. This started in childhood when feeling hurt or criticized led to self-blame and a rejection of one's own value.

Invisible drain. Abandonment trauma can create an "invisible drain" that leaks self-esteem, driven by this unconscious self-abandonment. This internal attack fractures your sense of self, heightens fear of future abandonment, and creates fertile ground for the Outer Child to gain power and develop self-defeating defenses.

Unconscious process. Self-abandonment is a silent, often unconscious process. It leads to self-criticizing, blaming, and shaming, which keeps you mired in self-doubt. The Outer Child program aims to undo this by helping you administer to your long-neglected primal needs and feelings, reprogramming automatic behaviors and healing your emotional core.

5. Use Separation Therapy to Dialogue with Your Inner and Outer Selves.

In separating the parts of the personality, it gives you access to an internal dynamic that dictates how you relate to yourself (and others) and what you accomplish in life.

Physical therapy for the brain. Separation therapy is a hands-on technique using simple dialogues to give voice to the Inner Child, Outer Child, and Adult Self. It's like physical therapy for the brain, building self-esteem and confidence by addressing underlying sources of self-doubt and inhibition.

Dialogue process. Dedicate a notebook to write dialogues between your Adult Self ("Big You") and Inner Child ("Little You"). Big You speaks caringly and consolingly, while Little You expresses its feelings and needs. This process helps Big You get stronger, nurture Little You, and gain control over Outer Child's interference.

Turn Around technique. Visualize your Outer Child turning around to face your Inner Child, mediated by your Adult Self. This forces Outer to separate from Inner's feelings and listen directly. Big You promises to find healthy outlets for Outer's energy, uncoupling the automatic link between Inner's feelings and Outer's reactive behaviors.

6. Shape Your Future with Guided Visualization and a Dream House.

To reach your dreams you need a crystal-clear picture of what constitutes that dream come to life.

Power of imagination. Guided visualization uses your imagination deliberately to develop and crystallize your intentions and nourish your mind. By creating a clear mental picture of your desired future, you strengthen your intention and make it harder for self-doubt to sabotage your goals.

Back to the Future. Imagine yourself in the future (e.g., two years from now), having already achieved your goals and feeling happy and at peace. Work backward to identify the obstacles you overcame and the behavioral steps you took. This stimulates problem-solving and "as-if" reasoning functions in your brain.

Dream House visualization. Create a detailed mental image of an ideal home or natural landscape ("Dream House" or "Dream-Scape") that embodies your emotional needs, potential, dreams, and future self. Conjuring this image frequently (even for seconds) nourishes your mind, stimulates brain areas involved in focus and goal achievement, and reinforces positive new behaviors through dopamine rewards.

7. Take Small, Conscious Action Steps to Build Momentum.

The actions you’re about to choose involve doing something positive for yourself— simple acts of self-kindness.

Behavioral change is key. Overcoming self-sabotage requires taking behavioral steps, not just gaining insight. Action steps are the third prong of the program, providing a lever of control against helplessness and bringing you into the moment with your feelings intact.

Baby steps work. Choose small, simple actions (as little as five minutes) that are easy and even pleasurable to accomplish. These are acts of self-kindness dedicated to nurturing your Inner Child and constructively channeling Outer Child's energy.

Conscious intention. Perform each action step with the conscious intention of addressing your core needs and moving toward your goals. Hold your Future Vision in mind while acting. This mental link strengthens your intention and helps your brain build new neural pathways for goal-directed behavior. Consistency is key; aim for daily actions to build momentum and make new habits stick.

8. Understand Traumatic Bonds and Abandoholism in Relationships.

When someone’s behavior causes you emotional or physical pain, it creates fear, and this fear intensifies the bond.

Fear strengthens attachment. Traumatic bonding occurs when pain or fear intensifies a bond, making it harder to leave someone who hurts you. This is often driven by abandonment fear, which triggers the release of addictive opioid neurochemicals, physically hooking you to the source of pain.

Abandoholism explained. Abandoholism is an addiction to the emotional drama and neurochemicals of abandonment, leading to attraction to hard-to-get or emotionally unavailable partners. Insecurity triggers adrenaline and opioids, creating the "high" of infatuation, which is confused with love. When a partner becomes secure, the chemical flow stops, and passion wanes.

Intermittent reinforcement. Occasional kindness or availability from an otherwise hurtful or unavailable partner creates stronger conditioning than consistent positive behavior. This intermittent reinforcement strengthens the traumatic bond, making it difficult to break free from unhealthy relationship patterns.

9. Tame Your Outer Child's Grip on Love and Connection.

Emotional suction cups rise to the surface involuntarily when someone triggers your abandonment fears.

Emotional suction cups. Insecurity in relationships triggers involuntary "emotional suction cups" – clinging or demanding behaviors aimed at securing connection. These are Outer Child maneuvers that sabotage intimacy and can drive partners away, leading to a self-imposed prison of loneliness.

Self-reliance is key. The solution is to strengthen your Adult Self to nurture your Inner Child's emotional needs yourself, rather than handing them over to your partner. This self-nurturance reduces the neediness and transforms you from an emotional supplicant into a self-reliant adult capable of healthy, lasting intimacy.

Practice self-love. Use separation therapy (dialogues) to get in touch with your core needs for acceptance and cherishing. By attributing self-defeating behaviors to Outer Child, you free Inner Child from blame and give it unconditional love. This self-love is the template for healthy relationships and reduces Outer Child's power to project needs onto others.

10. Overcome Procrastination by Facing Avoidance and Taking Levers of Control.

Procrastination is the most pervasive and insidious stumbling block to success.

The art of "not doing". Procrastination is a primary Outer Child ploy, involving avoiding necessary tasks and letting things pile up. It's an adult form of "peekaboo," where you unconsciously imagine that ignoring something unpleasant will make it go away, often stemming from a primitive belief that if you can't see it, it's not real.

Helplessness and obstinacy. Procrastination combines the autonomous obstinacy of a two-year-old saying "No!" with the passive assumption that someone else will take care of things. It can also be fueled by perfectionism ("do it perfectly or not at all") or a tacit belief that no one can see what you're doing (or not doing).

Levers of control. Combat procrastination by taking small, conscious action steps. These steps, however minor, provide a "lever of control" – a psychological handle that reduces the stress of helplessness and builds momentum. Dedicate these actions to your goals and Inner Child's needs, using visualization and dialogue to stay motivated and override Outer Child's inertia.

11. Address Addictions (Food, Debt) by Listening Radically and Acting Consciously.

When Outer is in control, you feed both physical and emotional hungers with food— sweet, salty, or savory food.

Outer Child's addictions. Outer Child is susceptible to addictions like overeating and overspending, often driven by dopamine-mediated reward-seeking and the desire for immediate gratification. Credit, unlike cash, makes spending abstract, bypassing the brain's loss-aversion function and fueling debt.

Radical Listening. To tame these addictions, use "Radical Listening" to give full, non-judgmental vent to your Outer Child's urges, rationalizations, and denials (e.g., in a food journal). This brings unconscious patterns to awareness, allowing you to accept the reality of your urges and focus energy on changing behavior, not trying to eliminate the urge itself.

Conscious action. Combine Radical Listening with conscious action steps. These small, pleasurable actions, taken with the intention of nurturing your Inner Child and achieving your goals, provide healthy outlets for Outer Child's energy. They build new, positive learned behaviors, incrementally replacing addictive patterns and strengthening your Adult Self's control over impulses.

12. Heal Depression by Nurturing Your Inner Child and Acting Your Way Out.

Depression is reversible. The brain is plastic, moldable, and regenerative.

Depression's many forms. Depression can be a chronic low mood, acute response to loss, or manifest as obsessive self-focus and anxiety. It can be a physical disorder affecting multiple brain functions, often involving a reduction in overall brain activity and a "searching for the lost object" (peace of mind).

Role reversal. Depression is often linked to an internal role reversal where the Inner Child is neglected or expected to "parent" the Adult Self. Outer Child exacerbates this by displacing energy on self-defeating behaviors like isolating or ruminating, sabotaging recovery.

Act your way out. Overcome depression by firing up all three program engines: visualization (Future Vision, Dream House), emotional attunement (dialogues to nurture Inner Child's needs), and consistent action steps. These steps, however small, move muscles, stimulate neurochemicals, build structure, and strengthen the brain's capacity for repair and growth, allowing you to act your way out of the depressive state.

Last updated: July 8, 2025