WHY DON’T YOU SEND YOUR PARENT PACKING? – How to enjoy yourself.
Preposterous! You might say when you read the headline. I don’t mean the one living with you but the one who is inside of you – your inner-parent.
There definitely seems to be an impact of how parenting has influenced your ability to enjoy yourself.
Many parents, doing their best to bring up their children in a far from perfect world, teach them to feel guilty, ashamed, and embarrassed. The things you feel guilty, ashamed or embarrassed about are probably the ones you know your parent would not want you to enjoy. You might want to pause right now and make a list of them. Most people vary in the triggers for these feelings. When you find yourself doing things you know you are not supposed to enjoy, or which you should not find amusing or pleasurable, then you end up punishing yourself with bad feelings.
How then to enjoy yourself?
Now you are in charge of your own life, you can diminish your inner store of bad feelings by getting rid of some of the items you are not supposed to enjoy. It is time to take off some of the restraints your parent imposed and which you have perpetuated. Over the next few days or better still make time to enjoy at least one thing your parents would have disapproved of. Make sure also that somebody else is told that you have done this and enjoyed it. Without apologizing ofcourse! Everybody’s list will be different and not fit everyone’s circumstance. Here are a few which you can ponder on and would help you get started.
If your parent was always moaning about money, go and do something extravagant. Buy yourself something you cannot afford, and then face up to your own feelings of guilt. They are coming from your built-in parent, and they stem from the impossible demand that you should not enjoy yourself without the parents permission. Each time you feel yourself worrying, or feeling guilty, tell the parent in your head to grumble at somebody else. You have the right to act without permission, and to spend too much money, and you have taken over that right and exercised it. It is not your parent’s business when you enjoy yourself, and that is the end of the matter.
If you are embarrassed by dirty jokes, find a book or magazine or blog which contains this kind of joke or cartoon. Learn the joke by heart and tell somebody who you can tell. Do not give up. This is what the tyrannical side of your parent wants you to do, but you are now running your own life. Tell the parent in your head to do something rude, and start the joke again. The important part of this exercise as you can see is to unlearn one of your inner fears, so that something in future will be less embarrassing. This is done by sending the inner-parent packing.
Another suggestion you might like to follow and which might help to defuse the hidden anger and fear in you is to give yourself permission to be noisy. It acts as an antidote to hidden anger at having to be quiet as a child, to stop yourself from showing off in front of embarrassed adults to worrying about what will the neighbors think, to letting go when you feel good and many more. Above all it will set you on the road to sheer enjoyment of being yourself.
The sexual act of course is one such area whether it is with your partner or with yourself where you can be uninhibited and make some noise without the fear of what will others think; more importantly your inner-parent thinks. It can force you to face up to strict parental controls left over from childhood. Maybe you know this already, and never let the opportunity pass without vocalizing it in full voice. It is surprising though how many of us do not. We perform sexually, instead of enjoying ourselves. This pleases the parent in the head, who was never quite sure that it was a ‘good thing’ to let yourselves be sexual.
If you felt embarrassed or a little uncomfortable reading the above paragraph then you must surely ask your inner-parent to pack off.
Make a list right now of all those things which makes you feel embarrassed, guilty or ashamed. Review the list to see how much of it is actually a result of your parents influence on you which now has gotten converted to being your inner-parent.
If you are a ‘parent’ and are instilling a sense for ‘embarrassment’, ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’ in your child then it is time for you to pack your bags.
ARE YOU READY TO PACK OFF YOUR PARENT?
