SELF-Parenting: Dating vs Marriage

Some early SELF-Parenting Practitioners have deeper difficulties as they go through the Ten Steps. Essentially, they want to know, “What is Intermediate Status in SELF-Parenting anyway?” This question has a deeper existential source. The short answer has always been clear. During the Beginner to Intermediate Ten Steps, the Inner Parent is asked to be only a listener and say “TYICFTMT.”

Starting with Intermediate modules is when the Inner Parent gets to be an active participant in your half-hour sessions, other than as a listener. This is designed to protect your Inner Child from early onslaught and train your Inner Parent how to listen and accept what’s being said. However, I would like to provide a more complete answer on this topic to deepen the discussion.

The Beginner Ten Steps is a new “path,” “understanding,” “journey of procedural learning” which most people don’t anticipate is ahead of them when they first start SELF-Parenting. They read the yellow book, start some sessions, like what’s happening, and contact the website to get a module. All this can happen quite naturally over time without too much introspection.

Occasionally there is some resistance to the 23 Tips, so I just want to say. The 23 tips are why SELF-Parenting works as good as it does. Some people feel like it’s restricting or whatever.

Note: if you know the book from 2011, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, basically the author points out how practitioners in major industries such as aviation and medical surgeries, among others, resisted basic outside checklists before their procedures, because they were the “smart” ones. 

It turns out, basic checklists save lives, such as during the US Airways Flight 1549, Sully Sullenberger, landing in the river.

Thus, establishing checklists leads to major increases in medical operations, safety procedures, survival, lives saved, etc.

It turns out the 23-Tips are a checklist written in 1986, to provide the safest, best way to protect the SELF-Parenting interaction between the Inner Parent and Inner Child. The good news is that once you follow these guidelines, they make everything SELF-Parenting related simple and wonderful for all concerned. And they are easy as pie to follow if you start them early.

SELF-Parenting can surprise people in that given the crazy lives we all have, it can become a challenge to continue and maintain sessions. Most people who get this far are likely to complete the first three modules. If they are truly motivated, they will read P.E.T., do Inner Conflicts, and thus they easily and naturally become Intermediate Level Practitioners.

However, the Intermediate Level in SELF-Parenting is where and when the rubber meets the road. Now the Inner Parent if finally allowed, asked, indeed “forced” to become a conscious participant on the SELF-Parenting seesaw. Here is the biggest jump/challenge to the level and depth of this practice. This is the SELF-Parenting big leagues.

Intermediate is where all your sticky issues as an Inner Parent, such as your outer parenting history, family dynamics, ego “who wants to be in charge,” social programming, cultural influences, and other karmic issues are going to be revealed.

Here is the point I wanted to make in this article. Beginner level SELF-Parenting is like dating. You meet someone, there’s an attraction, you hang out, get to know the other person, go places, interact, etc. It can start out casual but eventually you must decide if you like each other enough to progress your relationship to a deeper level. You may or may not “last” as a couple but you were in the game.

Intermediate Level is like getting married. Now you are committed to a lifetime, for better or worse, playing “for realsies” with an aim towards the long haul. Once married, begins the real work in an outer relationship. And so it is with Intermediate SELF-Parenting.

The best and ideal outcome for this relationship is like the old married couple of 50 years, who stayed together through thick and thin. Everyone admires them and wants their relationship to be like theirs, because their love is strong. Given that marriages fail at 50% at least and getting to the 50-year mark is probably less than 10%, I can assure you that the SELF-Parenting relationship can be as challenging.

This isn’t meant to scare you, but simply to provide future motivation that the Intermediate, Advanced, and Lifetime SELF-Parenting can be tough, but they are also beyond amazing.

Martin Luther King said it best: