Book Extract - Homecoming - Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child

The wounded inner child contaminates intimacy in relationships because he has no sense of his authentic self.

The greatest wound a child can receive is the rejection of his authentic self. When a parent cannot affirm his child’s feelings, needs, and desires, he rejects that child’s authentic self. Then, a false self must be set up. In order to believe he is loved, the wounded child behaves the way he thinks he is supposed to.

This false self develops over the years and is reinforced by the family system’s needs and by cultural sex roles. Gradually, the false self becomes who the person really thinks he is. He forgets that the false self is an adaptation, an act based on a script someone else wrote. It is impossible to be intimate if you have no sense of self. How can you share yourself with another if you do not really know who you are? How can anyone know you if you do not know who you really are?

One way a person builds a strong sense of self is by developing strong boundaries. Like the borders of a country, our physical boundaries protect our bodies and signal us when someone is too close or tries to touch us in an inappropriate way. Our sexual boundaries keep us safe and comfortable sexually. (People with weak sexual boundaries often have sex when they don’t really want to.) Our emotional boundaries tell us where our emotions end and another’s begin. They tell us when our feelings are about ourselves and when they are about others. We also have intellectual and spiritual boundaries, which determine our beliefs and our values.

When a child is wounded through neglect or abuse, his boundaries are violated. This sets the child up for fears of being either abandoned or engulfed. When a person knows who he is, he doesn’t fear being engulfed. When he has a sense of self-value and self-confidence, he doesn’t fear being abandoned. Without strong boundaries, we cannot know where we end and others begin. We have trouble saying no and knowing what we want, which are crucial behaviors for establishing intimacy. Intimacy dysfunction is greatly potentiated by sexual dysfunction. Children who grow up in dysfunctional families are damaged in their sexual development. Such damage is caused by poor sexual modeling in the family; a parent’s disappointment in the child’s gender; contempt for and humiliation of the child; and neglect of the child’s developmental dependency needs.

Gladys’s father was never home. His work addiction had taken over his life. In his absence, Gladys created a fantasy father. She is currently in her third marriage. Because her ideas about men are unrealistic, no man has ever measured up to her expectations.

Jake saw his father verbally abuse his mother. She always made the best of it. Jake has no idea how to be intimate with women. He tends to pick passive, complying women, then quickly loses interest in them sexually because he disdains them, as he did his mother. His most satisfying sexual experiences are when he masturbates, during which he fantasizes about women in demeaning sexual situations.

Many children know that their parents are disappointed in their gender—Dad wanted a boy and got a girl; Mom wanted a girl and got a boy. The child comes to feel ashamed of his gender, which may later lead to varying degrees of submissive sexual acting out. A child victimized by parental contempt and humiliation is often set up for sadomasochistic sexual behavior.

Jules’s mother, an untreated incest victim, had never worked through her sexualized rage about her abuse. Jules bonded with her and internalized her anger at men. He later became a sex addict. He owns a large collection of pornographic books and videos. He is turned on by imagining himself being demeaned and humiliated by a dominant, mothering-type woman.

Children need firm guidelines to master the tasks of each stage of development. If a child cannot get his age-appropriate developmental needs met, he will be arrested at that stage of development. Children who fail to get their infancy needs met become fixated on oral gratification. This may manifest sexually with a fixation on oral sex. Children arrested in the toddler stage are often fascinated by buttocks.

Fascination with a genital part is called “sexual objectification,” and it reduces others to genital objects. Sexual objectification is the scourge of true intimacy. Intimacy requires two whole persons who value each other as individuals. Many co-dependent couples engage in intensely objectified and addicted sex. It is the only way their wounded inner kids know how to be close.

Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw