In 1994, I was feeling despair after my partner ended our relationship. A friend gave me one of Dr. Margaret Paul’s books, Healing Your Aloneness, and my life changed. For the first time, I realized how I abandoned myself in relationships by focusing on trying to caretake my partners and get them to make me feel lovable. By learning and practicing her process called Inner Bonding, I began to value myself more and was no longer willing to take responsibility for other people’s thoughts, feelings and behavior. When I started taking personal responsibility for loving myself, I was ready to be in a healthy relationship and soon afterwards met my wife.
Overview
Inner Bonding® is a self-healing process that heals feelings of aloneness by building an Inner Loving Adult who is constantly connected with your Inner Child/feelings and with your Higher Guidance/Higher Self.
The way we treat our Inner Child determines our self-worth.
Growing up, you may not have had parents who role-modeled personal responsibility and who unconditionally loved you. As a child, you created a false belief system based on how you saw your parents treat each other, themselves and you. Although your false beliefs helped you to survive your childhood, they no longer serve you and are now causing your pain. Common false beliefs include:
- I’m selfish if I take care of myself
- Others cause my feelings
- I’m responsible for others’ feelings and behaviors
- I can’t handle my pain
- I’m unlovable
- I can control others
The Six Steps of Inner Bonding® give you a way to uncover your false beliefs, heal your childhood trauma and release your creativity, passion and joy.
What is truly loving to ourselves is loving to everyone else.
Inner Bonding® can help you learn how to:
- Not take others’ behavior personally
- Move into compassion for yourself
- Express anger in a healthy way
Learn how to fill your own inner emptiness rather than looking for others to complete you.
The Six Steps
- Feel your feelings and take 100% responsibility for either causing your feelings in the present or managing feelings that are a result of life situations.
- Consciously connect to your Higher Guidance/Higher Self. Move into compassion for your feelings by telling yourself that you have good reasons for having these feelings and then open to learning about what those reasons are.
- Talk with the part of you that is having the feelings (your core inner child) and then the part of you (your wounded inner child) that is telling yourself or doing something that is causing your feelings. Identify any false beliefs from childhood and release your feelings.
- Ask your Higher Guidance/Higher Self for the truth about your beliefs and then identify the loving action that is in your highest good
- Take the loving action.
- Evaluate the action: Are you feeling more self-worth?