Quick Tips #16: Help! My inner parenting is messy!

Question: “I have been following you for a couple of months now and the feeling of being known as an INFJ through your resources is priceless. I have been trying to do this work of inner parenting. But I find it to be emotionally messy. I don't like the me that I see.

Firstly, I’m not using introverted thinking (Ti) but beginning to use extroverted feeling (Fe), which is the inner parent process.

My fear is that I may not feel like doing anything at all and follow the feel. On a social level, this may make me look picky, fussy and hard to please with rhyme or reason (my ISFJ sister hints this to me and I feel this underlying emotion from people I interact with sometimes).

On a personal level, if I get up and ask myself how I feel I may not want to even embark on some of the most important day to day responsibilities which will ensure that I have food to eat and my bills are paid. How do you navigate this?”

This is a great question. Many INF types find that when delving into our feelings, they tend to take over and the day to day tasks just get less and less done.

When things get messy, it just basically means that your inner parent is not very healthy yet.

The key here is to make sure that your inner parent chooses what time frame to give to that interaction with your inner child.

INFJ – Harmony Inner Parent

When you start using your inner parent, the harmony process, you get more flexible and less structured. This can bring messiness to the process because your 10 year old accuracy inner child is not running the show anymore.

What the harmony inner parent needs to do is set boundaries for both the inner children and the people in the outside world. This is one of his or her biggest challenges or tasks in life, so it’s very important that you actually do start to use the really healthy inner parent process here.

• Unhealthy Inner Parent

The unhealthy inner parent is a person who lets everybody else, including their inner children, do what they want and lets other people dictate the day.

• Healthy Inner Parent

The healthy inner parent doesn’t allow other people to dictate the day. They set the appropriate boundaries and are in charge of their day.

INFP - Exploration Inner Parent

Your 10 year old memory inner child tends to collect the kind of evidence in the world that supports what he or she already thinks. They are only looking for supportive evidence and can be ignoring the ones that doesn’t back their story up. In those cases, it’s really easy for emotions to take over the whole day.

It’s important that the exploration inner parent sets time limits or exploration boundaries when it comes to your inner children, so that you can have the long term benefit from looking into those emotions.

• Unhealthy Inner Parent

The unhealthy inner parent is all about distracting themselves by binge watching shows or going somewhere and doing something while losing the track of time.

• Healthy Inner Parent

The healthy inner parent sets specific exploration time for the inner children and to their feelings.

To recap: Work on your healthy inner parent process qualities and strengthen those before you start taking the decision making or the information gathering responsibility from your 10 year old.

Set appropriate boundaries and give specific time frames for your inner children to get in touch with their feelings.

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