“When I feel the bliss of total acceptance, people take advantage of me…”
A Reader writes:
“I think maybe I’m sometime not using Focusing the right way…or maybe I’m missing something. When I do Inner Relationship Focusing, I start feeling this bliss, this total acceptance not only of my parts and myself, but of others. It’s good of course, even great, and I love this feeling. It has even allowed me to make more friends…
“But on the other hand I started feeling more like a child, not seeing anything bad in people. And while it’s a popular and pleasant idea to think that all people are good and wish well to each other, it’s not the case. These ‘protective parts’ that close us, that make us less friendly and trusting, aren’t that bad it seems. Since this cute inner child woke up in me and is often taking over, I’m finding myself being hurt and betrayed more.
“I do like what this ‘child’ brings me (that’s why it has become so dominant) – I ‘feel’ more, I can connect to people more, I’m liked more often than when I was closed…but I’ve also gotten hurt much more, since my curious child started to take on more challenges with people, so I think I need to call another part to help…or to “wake it up”, or “bring to awareness” to it, that would appear at appropriate situations. My child likes to bond, and it is appearing at work, on public transportation, and then feels hurt when it gets mistreated by people who obviously don’t care about me or my feelings.
“My current goal is both to be able to ‘feel’ and connect with people, and yet be able to stay strong and not be vulnerable with inappropriate people.”
Dear Reader,
I love your current goal. It’s one of my goals, too.
And I’m so glad you wrote, because I can clear up a misunderstanding. Even though I wrote a book called The Radical Acceptance of Everything, I am not in favor of trusting people indiscriminately. As you point out, that would not be smart or wise. After all, people that we meet in the world are in all kinds of states. I can believe in their innate goodness, but if they are identified with a part that is impulsive or aggressive, trusting them to take helpful actions is simply not smart.
My book is about radical acceptance of everything in your inner world. And even that doesn’t mean allowing every part of you to take every action it wants to take, like chatting with scary strangers on the bus.
I have a question for you. You have a child part that trusts people too much. And you have a protective part that closes you down. But where is Self-in-Presence?
When YOU are Self-in-Presence, you can have your child part and your protective part, but neither one dominates you. Each one can inspire or warn you when necessary. As Self-in-Presence, you have the wider view and the balanced wisdom to discern that one person can be trusted to chat with, and another person you’d better stay away from.
Wise trust comes from the whole self, not from an inner child…
I would disagree with the idea that you have to become your inner child in order to be trusting, and that you have to become your untrusting, closed-off part in order to be safe. Both the ability to trust and the ability to be cautious are qualities that you have available to you, when you are the large Self.
You can even keep feeling blissful, because those enjoyable feelings are still available to you as Self-in-Presence! You’ll just be able to feel blissful and inwardly strong, as you experience how you are your own inner protector and you can discern which situations are need caution and which situations are appropriate for trust.
