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Quick Tips #27: Connection Between Depression And Inner Children
Question: “I'm interested in the connection between the inner children and depression. Could you tell me how you see it?”
Absolutely - what a great question! Depression is an exaggerated feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. It's like you don't have hope AND you can't do the things that would start giving you hope.
Depression is a feeling of complete loss of what could be possible. You're no longer thinking possibilities, you’re now thinking you can’t.
Depression tends to be associated with being in the victim position of the drama triangle.
When you're at the victim position of the drama triangle, it's really hard to get out of it and you feel like the persecutors and the rescuers, who are above you, have more insight and are better than you.
You feel like everybody’s better than you. You’re stuck in this victim position.
The connection between the inner children and depression is that it’s usually our inner children that feel the victimisation when they're on that drama triangle.
Each one of the 4 People Within® you fall somewhere on that drama triangle. Generally, it’s your inner children that fall into that sense of powerlessness and victim-hood.
The inner children are the less developed parts of you, so therefore they don't have the tools to get themselves out of the situations of victim-hood.
They keep trying to support themselves but they’re unable to do that so they keep victimising themselves and finding evidence of the fact that they're not good enough and that they should be depressed.
The key here is: continue to develop your inner parent process. Turn that inner parent into a coach.
The opposites of each one of those parts on the drama triangle are:
The Persecutor (usually your adult self) – The Challenger
The Rescuer (usually your inner parent) – The Coach
The Victim (usually your inner children) – The Creator
When you are depressed, your inner children feel like they have no options, because victims don't have options. Creators have options.
Now it's your inner parent’s job to remind your inner children that they are not victims, that they are creators and that in fact, they have choices. So that's how I see that.
I hope this helps.
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