WHAT IS INNER BONDING?
Inner bonding is a method that teaches you to take responsibility of your feelings and give yourself love and nurturance.The six steps of healing by inner-bonding was developed by Dr. Margaret Paul and Dr. Erika Chopich. It is a deep healing process that helps in improving our relationships, deal with anxiety issues, depression, addiction related problems, etc. which is generally a result of self abandonment.
SIX STEPS TO INNER BONDING –
STEP ONE: Step one involves willingness to feel the pain and learn from it.
We all carry certain false beliefs about pain because of our early experiences like –
› “If I feel it, I won’t be able to handle it”,
› “I should keep this lid closed”,
› “Pain is a sign of weakness”
This step involves taking responsibility and allowing yourself to feel the pain instead of numbing it. We need to resist the urge to follow numbing behaviours (or controlling behaviours) like various addictive behaviours. In order to do that, we need to move beyond these beliefs and be willing to test them from time to time. We need to change our perspective and see pain as a source of information.
It means taking responsibility of the whole range of emotions and feelings one is experiencing and becoming aware that how those feelings are affecting your thoughts, beliefs and actions.
STEP TWO: It means opening your heart to compassionate intent.Our intent is what governs our thinking, the way we feel about things around us and how we behave.
Step two involves being open to learn about how you might be causing your wounded feelings, and to being able to nurture your core painful feelings. This awareness will allow the person to practise and learn new behaviours and give love to oneself.
It means letting the Divine love and compassion enter into your heart.
Surrendering means embracing the wounded child in you. It means letting go of one’s attachment to the outcome and controlling thoughts. It means opening yourself to an exciting journey of discovery.
Thus allowing the desire to love to be stronger that the desire to protect yourself from pain, manipulation, hurt, or anything else that’s restricting you.
One of the ways to open this bridge of learning to love is prayers of gratitude which can involve anything like meditation, recitation or a song.
Another bridge to opening one’s heart is generosity. It involves shifting our focus from “how to avoid getting hurt or what I want” to “what I can give to myself and others”. This helps you connect with the divine love which is unconditional, abundant and always around.
Sometimes our fear of rejection is so strong that we are unwilling to open our hearts to see if the divine power is there for us. Until we are willing to take the leap of faith, we won’t be able to discover the true divine love.
Another important aspect of inner bonding is not shaming or judging your inner child and understanding that there might be reasons your inner child feels the way he/she feels and you should be compassionate to your inner child.
So instead of focusing on an outcome like finding love, we should focus on being a loving human being.
STEP THREE: Step three involves having a compassionate dialogue with your inner child and being open to explore what happened to you as a child that has resulted in the false beliefs (unworthiness, loneliness, rejection, etc.) that you are currently carrying. It also involves exploring what brings joy to your inner child.
It involves separately working on the healing of different parts of our wounded self. These healed parts eventually integrates with our core self and loving adult.
Our ‘core self’is our truest self and essence and ‘loving adult’ is a part of ourselvesthrough which we learn love and compassion and it takes loving action in our highest good.
The more you operate from your loving adult self, the more integrated you become.
Asking your inner child some questions like:
› “What am I telling you or doing that is making you feel anxious (or depressed,
angry, shamed, and so on)?”
› "How am I abandoning you? Am I making others responsible for you?
While exploring your feelings, false beliefs and behaviours, it is important to remember that no feelings are wrong. And no matter what answer comes up when you ask these questions to your inner child. You should be open and compassionate with your inner child.
You can also dialogue with various aspects of your wounded self at different ages. Our wounded self is the part of us that carries the fears, false beliefs and controllingbehaviours that result from our experiences as a child.
Some people use a stuffed doll or a toy and treat it like a surrogate inner child to practise the dialogues. Dialogues practiced through writing or speaking is most helpful because they slow down things and give you enough time to process.These dialogues also involve exploring your joys, desires and passions.
One important part of asking questions is observing that whether these questions are coming from a place of compassion or from a place of fear. And if you find that the questions are coming from a place of fear, go back and practise steps one and two again.
Understanding the wounded self help us identify our short term fixes or behaviours and truly listen to what our core self desires.
STEP FOUR: This involves dialoguing with spiritual guidance to explore the truth and understand what loving action you need to take for your inner child.
The spiritual guidance isthe energy of unconditional love,truth, wisdom, peace and joy that is available to all of us in the unseen spiritualrealm when we learn to access it.For dialoguing with the spiritual guidance we need to raise our frequency.
(The easiest example to understand frequency is imagining a place filled with people who are sharing kindness and love. This room will have higher frequency.)
There are various ways by which we can raise our frequency like: chanting, praying, keeping your body clear from addictive substances, dancing, spending time in nature, listening to music, and moving into our imagination.
But your “intent to learn” is the most powerful way to raise your frequency.
Spiritual guidance might mean different to different people like a deceased friend, their concept of god, a pet, a powerful animal, etc.If you don’t have a personal concept or figure representing your spiritual guidance, you can practice the dialoguing with your older, wiser self – Your Higher Self.
This practise of asking questions with your spiritual guidance and imagining the answers will help you discover how you truly feel. Our wounded selves are exhausted and sometimes we need to plug ourselves to a source of light like this to become energized again.
STEP FIVE: Step five involves learning how to take loving action. Understanding and releasing pain is not enough until you take loving action towards yourself.
It we affirm ourselves all day that we are a beautiful, loved child but not treating ourselves will love, it wouldn’t make any difference.
Taking loving actions means choosing to love both your core and your wounded self. It doesn’t mean that you have to judge your wounded self. It means understanding that your wounded self did the best it can to protect you.
The following are some examples of loving actions:
› Disengaging from the other person’s behaviour if the other person is engaging in hurtful behaviour towards you.
› Being open to connection and love.
› Taking care of your mind and body by engaging in reading books, exercising, listening to music, etc.
› Observe the way you talk to yourself without judging yourself.
› Express gratitude towards things.
Sometimes engaging in loving actions might result in making you lose certain people in your life, your job, your power over others, addictions, etc. But it is important to remember that it is okay to lose certain things in life, if it make you reach to your truest self.
STEP SIX: Once you have taken the action, you need to evaluate that the action is working out for you or not.
You need to ask yourself certain questions to evaluate your feelings like:
› How do you feel right now?
› Are you less interested in pursuing your addictions?
› Do you feel like you have better self-esteem?
If the answers to these questions show you that healing is not occurring, go back to Step Four and discover more loving actionsfor your inner child.
There are some questions your loving adult can ask your inner child, like:
Do you feel a sense of relief?
Do you feel loved by me?
Do you think you can set healthy boundaries with people around you now?
In the process of taking loving action towards yourself by changing your patterns, cutting off your addictions might make you experience withdrawal, fear, anger, etc. Therefore, it is important to keep reminding yourself that what feels good in short term might not be good for the long term.
At times while evaluating, your wounded self will try to drag you back into the same old patterns. Pay close attention to what answers you are getting when you ask the evaluating questions. If you hear something like this, then your wounded self is speaking:
› I’ll lose everyone if I keep setting boundaries.
› Life is too short to give up these pleasures.
If you give in to your wounded self’s rationalizations, you are not providing your inner child with true nurturance and is creating only and illusion of love.
Therefore it is important to evaluate how you are genuinely feeling and at times going back to previous steps if you feel the need to do so. Also at times you can take assistance to help you go through this inner bonding process to reach to that sense of integration and aliveness.
Once you start taking responsibility for your own feelings, your sense of self will start improving and so will all the relationships around you.
REFERENCES:
Paul, M. &Chopich, E. (n.d.).Inner Bonding: The Complete Process Of Self-Healing Anxiety, Depression, Addictions And Relationships. Retrieved from https://www.innerbonding.com/show-page/356/free-7-day-course-downloads.html
